Currently knocking around Whitby & the North Yorks Moors. On Sunday we went into the Talbot Hotel, for a magnificent roast, a Hotel we first visited some 35 years or so ago on a long weekend. I found it again by doing a Google search, Google Earth street view, and Google maps.
And that made us wonder, how on earth 35 years ago, did we
a: Decide on Malton
B: find a suitable hotel
C:book it
D get directions
Over a glass of Malbec and huge Yorkshire pudding, we pondered how we would have done it back then, and decided the Google of 1983 was the AA Book
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As you say.
We were talking last week about how we used to book holiday cottages in the early eighties, and recalled it used to be a case of looking in the backs of magazines and writing to landladies, asking them if they had a given week free.
You had to write to about half a dozen before striking lucky, often.
On the plus side, you have to admit there was a whole lot less traffic then. Many a motorway journey down to the southwest, which I did a lot in 1980/1, would have nobody in view front or rear for prolonged periods of time out of rush hour. If the Morris Minor ran for more than three miles without a breakdown.
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At least we know how to work an AA book, a flat phone battery could render many totally lost and helpless.
Last edited by: Old Navy on Wed 26 Sep 18 at 19:48
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I still have an AA caravanning & camping book for Europe from the mis 70s. (this was for camp sites for use an impoverished youth)...
Last edited by: R.P. on Wed 26 Sep 18 at 20:18
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I always used to book accommodation from the tourist information site, after requesting a brochure for the area.
Visit Britain's still my first choice.
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We were much more inclined to stick with places we knew. My parents went to same farm in Lakes in October and sometimes Easter from fifties to 1973. Albion Hotel at Freshwater Bay IoW from 60 to 71.
For Mrs B and I our source was the YHA and SYHA handbooks together with Bartholomew's half inch maps.
At work in early eighties where we needed to book accommodation for tribunal judges and their clerks ISTR we had some sort of English Tourist Board publication. Then a question of telephoning to check room rates and making a choice. Most places took bookings on trust. I don't remember even late cancellations being charged and given propensity of cases to settle at last minute these must have been commonplace.
Clerks were on fixed rate subsistence allowances. Stay in a flea pit and trouser a £15 'profit' or go up-market a bit and risk going over by a pound or two?
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>> At least we know how to work an AA book, a flat phone battery could
>> render many totally lost and helpless.
They don’t exist any more do they? I think the problem now is a proportion of the population unable or unwilling to get to grips with technology and at the same time old paper alternatives disappearing.
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We had our summer holidays in French gites when the sprogs were small, from c. 1981 to 1993.
Choosing and booking entailed writing to Gites de France at 178 Piccadilly, waiting for a book the size of a telephone directory to arrive, and choosing from the listings which each had a stamp-sized picture. Booking was by direct contact with the owners, either by letter or telephone.
Gites then were not usually the smart purpose-built or newly converted holiday homes they are now - most were the redundant house of the deceased grandmaman, and short on luxuries; or part of a vacated old-fashioned farmhouse after the owners had built themselves a modern one nearby. Our bedroom in the first one we took had a connecting door with the cowshed.
They were cheap though. That first one was £50 a week shared between two families. We loved it.
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>>the Google of 1983 was the AA Book
>>
...wouldn't have been particularly useful in revealing what the capital of Burundi was, though.....
Back in the day, was the AA guide of 1983 particularly gushing in it's praise of the Malbec, then.....?
;-)
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When I was little (late 50s or thereabouts) my parents annually hosted a fair sized family gathering at Christmas. We were on the outskirts of the easy side of London, but he visitors ca from Liverpool, North Wales, Southend, west London and elsewhere. They used to come for days, or so it felt - the whole house was in chaos to accommodate them.
My parents didn't have a phone until quite late (though I remember changing from Wanstead 7167 to 01 989 7167, whenever that was).
What I have often wondered is how they actually made these events happen. Must've been partly tradition supplemented by old fashioned post I suppose.
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I miss letters. My Mother used to regularly write me letters which chased me around the world. When I received one it was quite the moment. I really miss that.
Most things were done by post, I think. Post was pretty quick. Next day was normal, same day was possible.
I also miss random visitors turning up to see if you're in.
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I still use letters when I'm away. I quite enjoy it, I write perhaps a couple a month, seems much more significant /enjoyable than whatsapp messaging,although I use that as well.
I think we used brochures and word of mouth for things like holiday lets and campsites when growing up.
I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but was there a thing whereby the AA would provide you with a set of specific directions (uk and Europe ) for you that were printed off? This would have been around the early 90s.
Last edited by: sooty123 on Thu 27 Sep 18 at 06:53
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You're right, sooty, the AA did do that. I'd forgotten. Makes me think - how did we buy tickets for ferries and flights?
Did we just ring up and ask if what we wanted was free, and if it was, did we then reserve it somehow and send a cheque in the post? I can't recall.
I'm sure we as a family never used a travel agent, which would have provided that service.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Thu 27 Sep 18 at 07:33
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>> You're right, sooty, the AA did do that. I'd forgotten. Makes me think - how
>> did we buy tickets for ferries and flights?
the now more or less defunct travel agent. Every high street had one, they had the contacts, the special telephone numbers, all the guides and timetables, knowledge and experience. A few had telexes, faxes and even prestel
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I'm sure, nay certain, that as a young person who was booking tickets I never used a travel agent.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Thu 27 Sep 18 at 07:50
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>>I'm sure, nay certain, that as a young person who was booking tickets I never used a travel agent.
That's certainly how I used to buy ferry tickets, for example. Lots of places had booking offices though.
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>> the now more or less defunct travel agent. Every high street had one,
>>
Remarkably, despite most of the old shops having disappeared from it, Marlow High Street still has a Thomas Cook on it.
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> Must've been
>> partly tradition supplemented by old fashioned post I suppose.
>>
Post cards.
I've recently been searching through a trunkful of old family postcards from the 1920s and 30s.
There was a good reliable postal service then, with two deliveries a day, four I think in London. My relatives often scribbled a PC early in the day with comlete confidence that they would be met at the station that evening.
Before 1905 there was a system called Railway Sub Offices, whereby letters were sorted on trains and dropped off at the nearest station to remote rural spots, for delivery by railway staff at the station.
My great grandfather was rector of Heanton Punchardon near Barnstaple. The rectory had two addresses. Apart from the normal one, if you instead wrote "Wrafton RSO" on the letter got sorted onto a rural branchline and dropped off at Wrafton, the nearest village with a station, where the station master would forward it to the rectory by messenger.
It was much faster than the ordinary post, involving a long slow round of the whole local area.
There was an example quoted in the news a few years ago of a man working in London who sent his wife a postcard letting his wife know he would be late back for dinner.
There were also of course telegrams, which were even faster but more expensive.
Even I can remember post office despatch riders on motorbikes bustling constantly in and out of the main post office to deliver telegrams. My university entrance offer arrived by telegram in 1969, and I had to wire back immediate acceptance.
It was a hectic pace of life in the old days :)
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We used to get several telegrams a week, always a boy on a BSA bantam, from the fat controller at Liverpool Street, usually with a shift change that had to be acknowledged there and then.
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I am surprised that the Michelin Red (and Green) Guides have not yet warranted a mention. Used in 1970s was a definite step up from the 1960s AA Camping and Caravaning Guide. Very useful for travel on the fly to get an idea where a cluster of hotels maybe found.
The current Logis de France (paper) guide book is like stepping back into the past! Quirky layout and many some outdate errors.
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My in laws with very low income and a railway workers travel concession used to regularly go on holidays in Europe. This started with trips before WW2 and they were in the South of France when the War broke out.
I think the railway grape vine was the source of accommodation addresses.
Airline employees were in a similar situation, some with free flights and a similar grape vine.
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Dalton’s weekly was what we used. A weekly paper with pages of classified holiday rentals as well as lots of other stuff.
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Kelly's Directory listed every business in a town. Did it list residential properties as well?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%27s_Directory
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>> My in laws with very low income and a railway workers travel concession used to
>> regularly go on holidays in Europe.
Known as the "a privvy" , the privelage ticket. We once did Guernsey and then jersey all the way on Britsish railways transport
Wickford to Liverpool Street, walk to bank, Bank to Waterloo (Waterloo to Bank line then controlled by BR) Waterloo to Weymouth Harbour (train was "walked" through the streets on the harbour tramway), then on to BR Sealink (SS Sarnia I think) to the CI, then a stay in a union (ASLEF) cottage. All for nowt more or less
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 27 Sep 18 at 08:52
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My late Mum used to talk about holidays from school during term time in the 30s on the train as her father could not always get time off as an engine driver in holiday times.
On the "how did we" point we used to holiday in the UK and I remember there being lots of holiday brochures for Blackpool, Scarborough etc around the house in the spring time.
That sort of thing hasn't completely died out now, we still get Coach company or Railway company brochures even though we haven't taken that sort of holiday for a few years, maybe they still use the brochures approach as their client base is probably at the more mature end of the spectrum. :-)
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>>
>>
>> Known as the "a privvy" , the privelage ticket.
>>
My father was entitled to unlimited first-class travel, as were the family.
Once my mother and I ran to get on a train just as it was pulling out, and scrambled into the nearest compartment on a non-corridor train.
The train ground to a halt a few moments later and the guard came along to insist that we went walked along the platform to the first class.
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>> My father was entitled to unlimited first-class travel.....
...as was I in a previous life many moons ago, by courtesy of an "All Stations & Ships" leather pass. (the latter rather inaccurately named, as, pre-nationalisation or whatever, leather might have been used, but mine was a piece of plastic with a printed paper "entitlement" sheet glued on. :-( )
Pay and working conditions on the railway were pretty poor in those days, but, once the appropriate status was attained, the leather pass was a brilliant perk.
As alluded to above, travel concessions extended to foreign railways as well (though getting tickets could be somewhat bureaucratic) and this made travelling great fun. I recently posted about getting the sleeper over the water from Helsingor to Helsingborg; this was part of a trip to Bergen - first class all the way, and the only cost was the cabin charge on the (railway-run) Sealink ferry from Harwich to the Hook, and the sleeper/couchette booking charge from Copenhagen to Oslo.
One of many happy Continental sallies.
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And, since I've posted the above - for some time during that period, I worked on the Sealink ferry reservation system.
Prestel has been mentioned above. Though slow and clunky, it was (used for - amongst other things) the real forerunner of Travel Agent on-line access, though its early use was largely as a research tool for them determining availability and then carrying out the actual transaction on the 'phone.
Sealink purchased a good few Prestel terminals and placed them free in Travel agents' premises in an attempt to increase business. The pages on the Prestel system were largely static timetable information - no real-time availability.
It wasn't long before it was realised that they had also just supplied, free, a convenient access method to all their competitors' data on the Prestel system.
At that point, some of our comms wizards demonstrated to me that they could provide an alternative dial-up destination using the same protocol (our reservation system rather than the Prestel held "static" data), and accordingly, I and a colleague implemented Prestel-based direct on-line access to the booking system, with the ability of the agents to search and book in real-time.
The Sealink proportion of booking from the agents rocketed (the system, though using clunky protocols, was quick and easy to use, but I suspect the real reason for the increase was the agents' desire to demonstrate something "technically advanced" to their customers - toys, in other words).
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My grandmother and her sisters, who lived a mile or so apart, regularly communicated by postcard - "I'll call on Friday instead of tomorrow" or whatever.
If we were waiting for a letter and the postman didn't bring it, then it was "it might come second post". Incredible service. First and second class were introduced in 1968; really, it was second class that was introduced.
There was a 2-3 month mail strike c 1971. That probably accelerated the changes in how people used the mail.
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>> This started with trips before WW2 and they were
>> in the South of France when the War broke out.
>
My grandfather and my father actually left for their normal holiday in the south of France AFTER the war had started, and returned a fortnight later as planned.
They presumably assumed that the war would be a static one just like the last, and that in the area away from the front life would carry as normal. Which of course it did during the Phoney War.
My grandfather seems to have had a very blase attitude to international affairs. The previous year in 1938 they holidayed in Switzerland and Italy during the Munich crisis.
(This is all verified from postcards - see other thread)
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prompts the question, how much real information was known in 1938/9 about what was going on in far off places the other side of the channel, we were not at war with France, why should one not travel to France?
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The value of knowledge is much diminished from what it was. One can know pretty much anything you want to know by looking it up on the internet.
You'd hope it would have been replaced by an acknowledgement of the value of thinking and making use of that knowledge. Sadly, if anything, the opposite appears to be true these days.
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Just this morning we were walking in the country away from a phone signal, and the conversation turned to whether we were on the highest hill in Cambridgeshire. I couldn't Google there and then and felt slightly disturbed I'd have to wait.
We then talked about this thread, and decided in the "old days" we'd then have either had to hope the Pears Cyclopedia on the bookshelf at home would have the answer, or pop down to the library later and hope something there might.
Of course, once we had a phone signal I didn't look it up, and haven't yet.
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>>
>>
>> We then talked about this thread, and decided in the "old days" we'd
>>
>>
... have carried a map and read the contour lines and trig points?
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>> Just this morning we were walking in the country away from a phone signal, and
>> the conversation turned to whether we were on the highest hill in Cambridgeshire.
Standing on the Kerb were you?
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>>
>> Standing on the Kerb were you?
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1. That made me laugh
2. That made Mrs C laugh
3. How pleasant to see "kerb" spelled correctly
4. Should that be "spelt"?
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As Bertrand Russell wrote, "Most men would rather die than think; in fact, most men do." It is quite hard to do effectively and should be taught in schools.
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>> prompts the question, how much real information was known in 1938/9 about what was going
>> on in far off places the other side of the channel, we were not at
>> war with France, why should one not travel to France?
It was a well known fact at the time, the Germans could not break through the Maginot Line, France was safe
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Strangely enough I was staying at Holdsworth House on the outskirts of Halifax last night. A couple on a nearby table were discussing the Talbot in Malton.
Wasn't you was it Z? They did sound more northern.
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Neya we wor back daahn sahth last neet.
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How did we. ...? - Crankcase
