Black and White station was the start of holidays
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IN 1963 Cliff sang “We’re all going on a Summer holiday”. If you were taking a break in that year and lived in Cheltenham or its environs, then like as not you started the journey from the Black and White coach station (or just the Black and White, as everyone said) in St Margaret’s Road.
It was there, for over 60 years, for thousands of local families, that holidays began. Cheltenham was at the hub of the long distance coach travel network and each day of the summer season at 2pm, a long line of single deckers filed out into St Margaret’s Road bound for resorts around the country.
Not surprisingly, the result was traffic congestion on a major scale, so the first half hour of most holidays was spent sitting in a jam in the town centre. But eventually the growling Albions, Bristols, Guys and other such diesel denizens nosed free of Cheltenham’s overcrowded thoroughfares.
Then passengers could settle back in the plush seats, hope they’d remembered the bucket and spade and watch the world go by. The holiday had begun.
In the early 1960s, the young yours truly, with my father, boarded at the Black and White bound for Perranporth. It was 3am when we left Cheltenham. No M5 then, of course, so we gazed into the blackness from large picture windows as the Leyland Royal Tiger threaded its way along A and B roads.
By mid morning we reached Exeter. In those days the words “Exeter” and “bottleneck” were synonymous, thus affording us a fine view of the stationary traffic snaking into the far distance fore and aft. Suffice to say that by the time we arrived in Perranporth my usually clean shaven father was sporting a flowing beard and I looked too big to be in short trousers.
It’s difficult today to appreciate how long it took to travel from one place to another by road in the pre-motorway era. On the other hand, Dr Beeching hadn’t hacked the railway network up and thrown half of it away, so you could reach virtually anywhere in the country by train.
Thanks to progress it’s now difficult to reach anywhere by any means in high Summer, due to congestion, cones, roadworks, leaves on the line, privatisation and so forth.
Incidentally, Cliff first appeared in Cheltenham at the Gaumont (later the Odeon) cinema on February 22, 1959. Playing bass in his backing band the Shadows was Jet Harris, who later lived in the town and in Gloucester.
Gloucester Festival, staged in August with its carnival procession and jolly making in the Park, began as part of the Holidays At Home movement in the Second World War.
Holidays anywhere other than at home were virtually out of the question for the vast majority of people for the duration of the war. Families were split because Dad, Mum, or both had been called up and their children evacuated to rural parts.
Not many people had a car, but even those who did couldn’t get petrol.
Driving for leisure was out of the question and anyway, all the road signs were removed to confuse invaders. If you started asking anyone for directions you were likely to be hauled in as a suspected spy.
People were told not to travel by train unless they had to in the early years of the war to save on fuel and to make sure there were enough seats for the troops heading for their postings.
Restrictions on rail travel were stepped up later in the war in an effort to take pressure off the rail network while preparations for the D-day invasion were underway.
So in 1942 the government launched its Holidays at Home initiative. Towns and cities were urged to arrange merrymaking events, such as open air concerts, dances, children’s games and sports days that would be so attractive that nobody would need to go away for a break.
Surprisingly perhaps, the public response to Holidays at Home was enthusiastic.
So much so in Gloucester that the festival continued after the war and grew in scale.
In the 1950s and especially ‘60s local community groups and companies vied with each other to produce the best float. Some of the entries were remarkable lavish. One year the Co-op produced a replica of the Sphinx which trundled elegantly through the city centre on a lorry of the society’s fleet. The Bon Marche always devised an equally elaborate display.
In the mid ‘60s when open air pop concerts were all the rage, Gloucester Festival featured a Bands in the Park competition. On the bill of fresh faced beat groups were The Blackjacks, Vampires, Jaguars and Cotswold Stones.
But all conquering on the day were The Crowd - a local five piece comprising Ricky Welch, Colin Taylor, Jock Gwatkin, Greg Ford and John Jamieson - who pocketed the winners’ £100 cash prize.
Runners-up were The New Tones from Lydbrook and in third place came The Swingboats from Stroud.
For generations of Tewkesbury children, hot days during the long Summer holiday were spent swimming in the Severn or the Avon. Upper Lode lock was a favourite spot until the backwater was rented to the Edgebaston Angling Club and swimmers were promptly banned.
To make amends, the borough council designated disused sand pits across the Ham a public swimming area and provided changing huts, a raft and diving board. Tewkesbury Swimming Club used to meet at Stanchard Pit on the Avon, where adventurous types would dive off the iron road bridge near Bathurst’s boatyard.
But for those who fancied a day out, Wainlodes was the resort to head for. On bank holidays, families would set out from Tewkesbury on bicycles, crammed into a chugging Austin Seven
or Morris Eight, to stretch out on the sweeping bank of the Severn, paddle in the river and probably enjoy a pint from the nearby Red Lion.
Photographs taken at the time show thousands gathered on the bank at Wainlodes, packed shoulder to shoulder in deckchairs, jostling for a patch to pitch a towel and stretch out. This bend of the Severn is, and always has been a dangerous place to swim, not least because of the sunken barges.
These were scuppered in the river on the Red Lion side in an attempt to slow erosion and when the water is especially low the ribs of these vessels can be seen to this day. Despite the dangers, hundreds of people used to swim at Wainlodes and continued to do so until Tewkesbury’s first public swimming pool opened in 1957 on the site of the former cattle market.