When travel abroad was just a coach ride away ……

It is easy forget that before the age of cheap air travel, for many people a sightseeing holiday to Europe was one done by coach.

Of course, the more adventurous might do it by train, and those with time on their hands could book passage on tramp steamer, plying the Mediterranean.

But for those with a fixed number of vacation days, and a limited budget it was a coach trip, courtesy of a clutch of companies.

And here I have a personal interest because our family was part of that tourist industry.

Dad worked for Glenton Tours, which from the 1920s had offered coaching trips to sites in Britain and the Continent.

He had joined the firm sometime around 1925, and near the end of the following decade was one of the two drivers who whisked their passengers across Europe.

This he continued to do, with just the hiccup of a world war till he retired.

All of which meant we saw little of him from spring through to the end of the summer, and his visits were flying ones.  

Having returned late on a Friday night he would be off again in the morning, on trips which could be for seven, twelve or fourteen days, and taking him through France, and the Low Countries to Switzerland and Italy.

They were all inclusive holidays, and in the age before the end of rationing, Glenton even took responsibility  for the ration cards on trips across Britain.

They were pretty much a thing of the period and dropped away as cheap fares and package holidays made inroads into the customer base.

They remain a fascination to me, not least because for a brace of days the customers put their trust and independence down to someone else, and reading the Glenton Tours brochures, you do get a sense of that old line “if it’s Tuesday it’s Belgium, Holland and bit of France and if its Wednesday the snow topped Alps”.

All of which I was reminded of when Ann sent me a brochure for the rival company Cooks, who had been in the business a heap longer than Glenton and cast their net much wider.

This 1961 holiday guide was clearly also pitched at American tourists with all the holidays priced up US dollars as well as in guineas and a reference on the back to “American Private Parties”.

It is a wonderful little history book and one that takes me to a different world.

Location; Europe in the 1960s

Pictures; Cooks, Coach Tours Abroad, 1961, courtesy of Ann Scott