All sensible shoes and summer smiles ………

I am looking at one of those pictures which would have been all too familiar in the middle decades of the last century

We are on a private coach tour and the 31 passengers have gathered for the customary photograph outside one of the obligatory stops which in this case offered up “Souvenirs, Novelties & Postcards” along with “Ices & Minerals”.

I have no idea where we are or for that matter when.  But judging by the coaches and the clothes I think we will be in the early 1930s.

And this I think is confirmed by the figure of our dad standing sixth from the left as he would have looked in his mid-20s.

It may even have been before he moved to London to work for Glenton Tours which was in 1932.

If so, he might have been a passenger rather than driver and that may place the day out somewhere in the Northeast.

During the interwar years and into the 1950s the day out to some beauty spot or work’s outing were a popular way to see a bit of the countryside, escape from the city and enjoy an excursion with family and friends.

They predate the motor coach and there are plenty of pictures of horse drawn wagons and later charabancs plying the rural lanes, or parked up outside a pub.

Back in the 1960s to fill up the coach Dad took me and three friends on the firm’s  “Beano” to Brighton which consisted of several stops along the way, a fish and chip dinner, and a crate of beer on the coach.

Three decades earlier Nana regularly went on trips to historic and scenic places in the Midlands, for which we still have postcards bought at the destination and never sent.

Nor can we miss out the “mystery tours” which were still being advertised in the early 1980s in travel agents across the country.

The ones I remember were on display in Simpson’s travels agents on Wilbraham Road.  

The trick was to work out how far the coach could go from leaving Chorlton to return by 6 in the evening.

Not that I am knocking them.  The coach excursions, Beano’s, and mystery tours were an important recreational opportunity for people on limited means and especially before the introduction of paid holidays in the 1930s.

Our picture comes from a collection Dad had, but most are undated, and unnamed.

So there you are …. A little bit of how we had fun sometime before now.

Location; unknown

Picture; All sensible shoes and summer smiles, undated, from the Simpson collection