Can you remember going on the club coach trips to exotic places like Bridlington and Skegness?

Foreign travel had enjoyed a boost for years, often to the detriment of British seaside places which, with not enough money to spend on them, became progressively depressed.

A new word, ‘staycation’ was coined which tried to make us think it was actually better to stay at home, although failing lamentably.

One of the things we associated with summer as children, come rain or shine, was a trip to the coast in a ‘ charra’. Its posh name was charabanc, derived from the French!

For many children in the 50s, the annual club trip to Skegness, Cleethorpes or Scarborough was the nearest they ever got to an annual holiday. It was also one of the only ways that many people got to see Britain as few families owned a car, and air travel was light years away for the working classes.

Often the only people we knew who had been abroad were men, who had been in the forces during the war. For many of us, during the early 1950s, rationing was still in force and economic growth very slow after the war. Annual holidays weren’t a certainty for all families.

So, the yearly club trip was filled with excitement for children whose lives were not sophisticated, and who weren’t aware that it could get any better than the excitement of a day at the seaside.

Many of the districts of Sheffield had a Working Men’s Club, and people have fond memories of their local club with many no longer in existence.

The coaches had no air conditioning or toilets on board but always plenty of comfort stops. Sometimes you spent more time in the cafes en route, going to the toilet than you did in the resort.

You were given money in a brown envelope. This varied between 5 and 10 bob, and it seemed a fortune, a bottle of pop, bag of crisps and a packet of sandwiches. Your name was on a label pinned to the front of your jacket.

Your mum told you not to spend all the money all at once but of course you did in the first half hour on the amusements and slot machines. It was bad if it rained as you had to mooch around for hours with nothing to spend. You were not allowed to get back on the coach under any circumstances, monsoon, hurricane, or outbreak of war, until the time of departure.

The journey back was quite noisy. There were renditions of ‘This old man played one’ ‘ Ten Green Bottles’ and ‘One Man went to mow’, plus ‘For he’s a jolly good driver’

Someone was appointed to have a collection for the driver, walking round the coach proffering a cap. Most of the children had no money left anyway.

Stopping on the way back involved numerous stops by the side of the road where you could see heads bobbing up and down behind the hedgerow, and this was also a stop for people wanting to be sick after too much ice cream, candyfloss or rock.

Today, people have been spoilt by foreign travel and the day trip by coach is numbered. Its clientele are often just old people, still stuck in their ways. Today’s younger generations want more in the way of sophistication than down at heel resorts and faded glory!