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Holidays of the past

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rod
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Rod

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When I was but a sapling, I recall seeing large groups of people assembled on various street corners. It was a strange sight, for they carried, suitcases, flasks, handy carriers & pushed prams and pushchairs stuffed with their worldly goods!! My mom used to tell me they were going Hop & Fruit Picking.......

Well where did they go? I gues it was maybe around Worcestershire/ Herefordshire maybe? I would love to include a section on the mainsite, with anecdotal evidence of these holidays. People must have had some hard work, and good times. It must have been quite exciting too for both adult and child, to swap the smoky streets and dwellings, for the comparative peace and fresh air of the fruit and hop growing areas.

Did you take part in any of these trips? do you know of anyone who went, maybe your mom and dad, gran or grandpa?
Please contact me via email or private message me.

Rod Birch
 
fruit picking

hi rod
when i was about six or seven years old my mom took me fruit picking.
we stayed in old caravans at the back of a garage in a place called DUNHAMPTON.
it was mid way between WORCESTER and KIDDERMINSTER.
it was back breaking work, picking strawberris and raspberries.
my mom got paid for every little basket she filled,these were called PUNNETTS.
the fruit had to be good quality and if the checker found one bad fruit in the punnet he would discard the whole punnet and my mom wouldn't get paid for that one. there were lots of arguments.
mom never got much money from it, but every little helped.
good old days? maybe. :wink:

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Hop Picking

Blowed if I can remember where it was or how we got there, but me, my elder brother and young sister were with mom and dad stripping hops off vines in what seems to have been, in memory, a huge field. The hops grew up very high poles and a man came around with his own very high pole, which must have had a knife on the end, and cut the vines down. :) Also, there were dozens and dozens of other people about, moms and dads and children of all ages.
The hops were tipped from the collecting baskets into a big sack - much too big for us little ones to manage. The families worked together, children and all and a man from the farm kept a tally to pay at the end of the week.
We had a camp fire and mom always had something going on it for us hungry kids. I remember the enticing smell of bacon being cooked in the morning. Enticing, because we needed something to get us out of bed and back to the vines. We each had a big sack which we filled with hay to make a bed and we slept in our clothes. One or two dozen other little critters slept with us also - we could feel them marching about during the night.
We had time off to play and I remember scrumping and getting a belly ache through the rather acidy taste - we didn't know they were cooking apples. The lavs weren't all that posh either. Just a trench and a horizontal pole to sit on. The site was covered from view with a strip of hessian sacking.
My brother, whilst playing about with a rather ancient football, managed to kick it over the fence, down the embankment and onto the railway line. As the ball had been borrowed, he felt it his duty to recover it. So, clambering over the fence and sliding down the embankmen, he was just in time to stop before the onrushing train whistled by. That was the end of the ball and damn near the end of him. He was only 8yrs and I was 6yrs, so we didn't really know any better.
Just a few brief notes on far away times. I can still smell that bacon - by the way, it was fried on a shovel. :)
 
My parents went to Great Yarmouth from their late teens with their parents, late 30s. I spent the first 16 years of my life going as well! We always stayed with a lovely couple called George and Ivy Hopton at their guest house, "Four Oaks". I've just refound a card which my parents were given from the Hoptons, probably about early 1950s. I wonder did anyone else go to Four Oaks?
Also a pic of the regular Wednesday "Mystery Coach Trip".
 
I remember gooing to Great Yarmouth on holiday as a boy in the late 1940's - early 50s.
I remember being scared to death on the roller coaster there which, I believe, was built by German prisoners of war. Probably tame stuff compared with the monsters we have today but quite enough for me at that age.
 
Norma i went on a mystery coach trip,and they held a raffle to guess where they were going............and guess who won.....the coach driver

Mau-reece
 
I used to go to Hastings with my aunts and uncles. For years the family stayed at a house not unlike Four Oakes, the lady who was the owner, known to me only as Vera, was divorced and had a little girl who always came to the beach with us. The house was in Magdalene Road, right opposite to a convent. It was a treck up a very steep hill from the front, lovely going down in the morning. I went back for a week-end, some twenty five years ago now, Brian was indulging me in a bit of nostalgia. I so wish we hadn't gone. The world of my childhood collapsed, it had turned into bedsit land. Big old houses are easily converted aren't they and just as easily neglected.
 
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Norma
I'm the boy second from the left, holding hands with the boy in braces. Hmmmn! The coach driver was a Mr Tiddler, or at least that was as close as I could get at pronouncing his name!
Here's a couple more, sitting on the wall at Four Oaks with my uncle and me, Mom and Nan having a pint at a little pub round the corner. Neither of them drank pints, I assume they were my Dad's and Granddad's. I magnified the things on the table, it looks like one of them is about to wee but they're "Three Little Bears" according to the box. Maybe chocolate?
 
We didn't go on family holiday to Great Yarmouth but I have visited with friends. My brother Bill and I retraced a lot of our family holiday places in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall three or four years ago and I even managed to take my daughter who lived in London at the time to Dunster, a favourite of mine. We couldn't agree on which house we stayed in at Mumbles on the Gower Coast but spent a memorable day there.

The really early holidays following the war were spent at Margate and Cliftonville. (Dreamland...like a permanent fairground). I remembered one of the addresses and went on Google earth to see if it was still there. Sadly, it must have been pulled down in recent years because there is a big space where the whole block was removed. Also, I tracked down a house in Trinity Square, Margate where we stayed near to where the Holy Trinity Church had been (now a car park). The church was bombed by the Germans who dropped their excess bombs on the way home.
My brother and I just walked into the bombed church I remember!! The memory of the destruction has stayed with me.

Jean, I remember the Mystery Coach tours and yes many of them went to Bewdley and that area. They were always a lot of fun and stopping off at
the pubs on the way back, singing at the tops of our voices and collecting money for the bus driver. If you ever went on a coach tour you would never say that the English are reserved. Happy Days.

Too true about the large houses being turned into BB's Di. It's never the same but usually our initial memories of those places remain our favourites.
 
David,

Thank you for the lovely photos and story, all an important bit of life in Brum that has been and gone.

Graham.
 
We used to go fruit picking when we were camping at stourport to get our money to spend at the fair and buy maggots to go fishing on the river.Happy Days
 
We used to go to a pub in Worcestershire called the Live and Let Live at a place called Sinton Green. (Run by a Birmingham couple) and they used to have hop pickers there. People used to say they were travellers. I remember they used to frequent the pub, and we would see them in the fields picking. I always wondered where they lived. Perhaps they camped, but there was always families of them.
Lynda
 
We used to go hop picking in Herefordshire.The whole family would go aunts,cousins and the matriarch my gran,no menfolk...they were otherwise engaged.We lived in nissen huts,and cooked over an open fire.The charabang to take us used to pick up somewhere near Gosta Green.
 
How many of you can recall the “trips around the Bay” (Cardigan) on the pleasure boats “City of Birmingham”, “Pride of the Midlands” and a third boat the name of which escapes me?
 
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I had no idea that there were boats that travelled along the Cardigan bay and with such lovely names. I go to Aberystwyth a lot so this is very interesting. Thanks.
 
I used to go to Aberystwyth quite often with some mates of mine. We used to just pile the camping stuff on the roof-rack of one of the guys car, and shoot off there after work on a Friday after work, and travel back late on Sunday night ready for work on Monday. Lovely place, and lovely times. Barry.
 
Hello there Wendy,
There were indeed such boats. I was hoping someone could help me out with the first named boat because in the back of my mind is the doubt whether it was called "The City of Birmingham" or - against the wishes of and running the risk of missed Villa-supporting customers - "Birmingham City". The third boat was "Worcester Castle", but I would like confirmation. The usual trip wasn't in fact "around the Bay" but from Aberystwyth to Aberdovey.
db84124
 
Can confirm there was 'City of Birmingham', 'Pride of the Midlands' and 'Worcester Castle' working at Aberystwyth.
 
I remember as a child going to Liverpool on a coach and then going by boat down the Welsh coast [and back of course]. I was so proud I thought I had been on a cruise. I do remember the sea gulls pinching our sandwiches when we were on the deck. Unfortunately out of all the hundreds of old photo's I have I can not find one of these day trips. Jean.
 
Thanks for the info Len and Mike I know this is not my thread but it's of great interest to me. We have had a caravan on this coast between Aberytwyth and Newquay for over 20 years, so it's a second home.
 
Great photos, motorman-mike!
I believe I recognise where the first one was taken. It seems to be a drying-out basin within the harbour at Aberystwyth called locally “The Gap”. Do you know when it was taken?
The shot of “The Pride of the Midlands” was taken while she was preparing to take on tourists. The light-coloured building in the background is the old “King’s Hall”. The boat was in a very unusual and dangerous position with her port side exposed to incoming waves. The boatmen (please don’t make me say “boatpersons” as in those days in Aberystwyth they were undoubtedly all men!) habitually dropped anchor about 60 metres from the beach and held the stern seaward on the anchor line. Looking more closely at this extremely interesting photo, I think something must have gone wrong in the manoeuvre - just look at all those people on the beach! – the anchor has probably dragged and the breaking waves have pushed the boat dangerously close to the beach.
The third photograph shows “Worcester Castle” returning to Aberystwyth after her trip presumably to Aberdovey passing below Constitution Hill, to the north of Aber’s prom. On the skyline from right to left, one can see the upper station of the cliff railway (between the two masts), what I believe to be the old camera obscura and the pavilion.
motorman-mike, could you by any chance give us more information about your postings as regards dates, source, etc. Thanks ever so much, db84124
 
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