Ruminating on LW’s soggy sojourn in the NE docks I was reminiscing on holidays from Hell one has known.
As you all know, my opinion of holidays is zero rated and I am now quite old enough to refuse to go anywhere. In the past I have been more persuadable. Once upon a time, a million years ago the boy, when little, 8/9ish, moaned and bitched about he had never been on a beach holiday abroad. Well of course he hadn’t, my idea of hell would have been a package holiday on some foreign beach!! Well, he moaned and bitched sufficiently for me to relent. We booked a summer holiday at a resort on Fuertaventura in the Canaries. It was a beach resort sort of place, not too cheap and not too dear, looked quite attractive, a bit out of the way with no vulgar bars etc. Little cottages rather than a hotel. So off we went, some dreadful airline that expected you to get out and push, half the clients pissed before it took off. One knew right then it was a BIG mistake! Only to be confirmed when the peasants broke out in a rousing chorus of Ole Espan(y)a on landing right side up!
Horrid smelly coach to take the lot to the resort, most of these ‘guests’ seemed to hale from Hull/Hell, I think it must have been a dying gasp of Wakes Week. To be fair, the accommodation was basic Mediterranean and quite pleasantly done. The restaurants were acceptable, it was the bloody customers!
As usual there was a large contingent of krauts versus the Hullites, (Hittites might have been more apposite!) They fought in the bars, they fought in the pool, they fought in the gardens, they fought by day and fought by night. Positively Churchillian in their tenacity. We complained with equal tenacity to the management. After 48 hours of insufficient action we called the police. We were not exactly popular with the hotel management!
The last straw was the boy cut his foot on a glass thrown in the pool and his little knapsack stolen from his bed through the open window of the cottage. MkII and I agreed that this was the limit. We requested an early flight home, like yesterday, no dice, they refused point blank and said we would have to buy a scheduled ticket. There we were stranded in this hell hole for another 11 days.
We hired a car, headed straight for the port and took the ferry to Lanzarote, a much more elegant island where we had friends. Took a hotel room in an upmarket hotel, saw our friends and all the sights and had a very pleasant stay. When due to catch the ghastly flight home we reversed the journey and drove straight to the airport.
We were met by an hysterical holiday representative and a gaggle of local police. Evidently the hotel had informed the rep that we had disappeared with all our luggage, leaving no trace. they checked the airport to find we had not left by air but had not had the gumption to check the port.
They had spent a happy 10 days trying to find the corpses! They were all very upset and trying to make something of it. We had no obligation whatsoever to inform them, the room was paid for in advance and they had already refused to help. What we did and where we went was none of their bloody business! They were bloody lucky not to have had a lawsuit! And they were trying to give me grief?
Needless to say I read them their fortune in no uncertain terms! (In more vulgar parlance, tore them a new one!) THAT was the one and only package holiday that I have ever been on. Never again and I never have. After that the boy used to go abroad alone, he went to the Emirates to a schoolfriend when he was ten and traveled by himself for ever after to meet up with skiing parties and the like. We used to go in the UK, Falmouth was a favourite destination, I used to take a house and gather all the boy’s cousins, that was great fun. I used to be abroad in Europe for work and just used to tack a few days holiday on the end of a contract, much nicer, one didn’t get trapped in horrible places. Nowadays I only go to see people not places. I’m off to Wales in July.
I shall be delighted to relish your versions of the holiday from Hell! Nothing like a good vicarious wallow in other’s horror stories!!!
Boadicea's Chariot 
What a little ray of sunshine you are today Mrs. O.
We had a few like that, there used to be a charter airline in the UK flying Britannias back in the sixties, with propellers an’ all. We flew on one, four hours from Gatwick to Santiago del Compostella, in Northern Spain (at that time it was a Spanish Air Force base, not a civil airport and there were several squadrons of ME109’s parked there, I have pictures someplace.) then a two hour bus ride to the coast, it was colder than Monmouthshire all week and wetter.
You are right LW
Two batches of herb jelly failed to set and I have had to reboil them with commercial pectin (Which has my undying enmity from scratch!). The bloody apples had insufficient in the skins. Had to buy them, none left from last year. Fucking crap apples, where is a decent Bramley when one wants one???
So I have a year of eating, in my view, substandard mint and sage jelly, others won’t notice but I will and as far as I am concerned I’m the only one that counts!!! Zillions of curses. Had I wanted crap jelly I could have bought Cross and Blackwells!
Plus the weather is a bit grim here, dark, clouded, raining on and off etc etc.
May a thousand camels shit in the sandals of the jet stream.
There, that feels better!!
I take great personal offense when ingredients are not up to scratch, don’t know quite why!
Plus I am beginning to dread the journey home to Wales, I hate flying with a passion. Travel nowadays is a total bloody nightmare.
Very amusing, but honestly there is only one thing worse than a package holiday abroad and that’s BUTLINS. Sorry to use caps but the whole thing was terribly ill-advised, and I lasted precisely six hours.
My husband resolutely refused to fly with small children so some friends (?) suggested Butlins, a child-friendly venue by the sea. We approached the camp which resembled stalag something or other and he checked in, and instantly upgraded to the deluxe accommodation. Goodness knows what sort of hell hole the standard huts were like. We ate lunch, which was disgusting, the children hated the whole place and we escaped to Exmoor for the duration.
It was probably one of the most ghastly experiences ever.
I never went on a package holiday. I’m far to picky, demanding, and anal-retentive to allow even one detail to be handed over to someone whose understanding of my tastes (that does not mean they’re always good) is somewhat less than an amoeba’s. When going on holiday I control every single aspect of it from choosing the airline to the hotel to the airport. If that means I have to fly halfway across North America to avoid flying on an airline or using an airport I do not find acceptable, so be it. For the most part things go well.
Ara, you need a serious award for even approaching the place!! Definitely more guts than I have!!
Chris, how very wise of you! Knowing ones limitations is an inestimable attribute.
I’ve never been to Butlin’s, Araminta, but I did once win a week at a holiday camp on the Isle of Wight for the family. I forget the name, but it wasn’t too bad and the kids enjoyed it, though we did spend quite a lot of time out of the campsite. And guess who won the Ladies’ Archery medal that week?
I was once talked into taking the girls to Butlins by an aunt who’d decided to take her g’kids. I soon discovered that her agenda was to recruit us as her sitters while she pleaded exhaustion! Luckily all the children enjoyed it – even the mass catering and gross entertainment. It’s all about expectations, I s’pose.
I have to say that the few ‘package’ holidays I’ve been on I thoroughly enjoyed. I would not have contemplated a trip down the Nile on my own – nor would I have gone to China on my own.
The first was a spontaneous decision in the UK, in response to an advert. I was in Egypt some three days later – and I loved every minute of it. Well almost every minute – I did get food poisoning!
I’ve wanted to go to China since I was about seven years old. There were so many things I wanted to see. I spent hours pouring over travel brochures – and, I’ll admit, I spent a lot of money on the trip…
It was worth every cent. There were only thirteen of us – and we got plenty of opportunity to ‘add’ extra things that we wanted to do.
I’ve had several ‘holidays from hell’. One was a trip, with two small children, around Gloucestershire in a camper van – which we abandoned after three days of rain…
The second was intended to be a boat trip up the Thames. The motor packed up at Putney and we sat moored for two days while spouse no 2 ‘fixed’ it – or so he said. We set off – and the motor gurgled and died as we were passing under Putney bridge. The Thames runs fast and I held us off from smashing into the bridge with a broom stick while spouse no 2 insisted that he could get the motor running again… he didn’t.
This was not the peaceful quiet cruise that I had envisaged – and, so, we went home. 🙂
Sitting on a beach is my idea of hell – sitting on a river bank at Putney is even worse!
My idea of a holiday is one packed with places to see, places to learn about – I’m planning a trip to Tibet with the same company I went to China with.
Bo, I too like to look at new things and learn about them, just not human things!
I like to totter at my own pace from one geologic/geographic/meteorological phenomena to another.
The best was happening to be in Sicily on business when Etna blew in the 80s. Nice fast flowing river of lava down towards Catania. Needless to say drove to it rather than away, couldn’t get too close I didn’t have the right gear, but actually got to see lava flowing, worth a million boring beaches!
Stopping to photograph tornadoes is another somewhat exhilarating ‘entertainment’!!
Definitely the Painted Desert is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, surprisingly somewhat under-subscribed.