This is the secret to a memorable holiday, according to our travel editors
In a recent edition of our Travel newsletter I wrote about my serendipitous stay at St Bride’s hotel in Pembrokeshire, Wales — a trip made lovelier by the discovery that my grandparents had stayed there nearly 30 years ago, writes Claudia Rowan. A new spa and restaurant have been added since then, and interiors have been revamped, but otherwise little had changed. The sweeping panorama of Saundersfoot Bay, visible from much of the hotel, was just as striking as it had been in my grandparents’ faded Nineties snaps.
The highlight of my trip was retracing my grandparents’ stay with my husband, although our attempt at recreating their hike along the nearby clifftop path was sadly aborted, thanks to a grisly January storm. Here my colleagues on the Travel team share their own sentimental holiday tales — and we welcome your own in the comments below, the soppier the better.
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Camping in the Dales, just like old times
By Mike AtkinsI think the camping gear is still in Mum and Dad’s loft, along with boxes of paperbacks that will never be read again, various lifeless pillows, broken lamps and the Christmas decorations. By my reckoning the tent, butane stove and whatnot were last used about 40 years ago, over a couple of balmy summers when the old man, Bess the black lab and I would head out into the Yorkshire Dales.
We only did it a couple of times. Three max. But some of my favourite memories are from those trips. Huddling beside a dry-stone wall in a storm eating Eccles cakes (the only food we could find in the village shop). Bess sleeping on her back between us in the tent at the Riverside campsite in Malham. Evenings spent at the nearby Buck Inn, in the side bar for hikers with dogs and muddy boots, eating steaming pies and feeding the jukebox 10p pieces.
Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales National ParkAlamy
Decades later I’d take my own son, driving up from London to visit Mum and Dad most summers. Naturally I took the opportunity to buy loads of new camping gear, but we’d still pitch up at the Riverside, it would still rain (a lot) and we’d still spend evenings at the Buck Inn (although the jukebox had gone). I’m sure this retreading of old ground meant more to me than it did to my son, but hopefully he will come to remember those trips with affection. All the equipment I bought is at the back of a cupboard now, untouched in five or six years. But I like to think that if my lad ever has children of his own, thoughts will turn to Malham. We’ve got plenty of gear he can use.
The only way is Essex
By Cathy AdamsAn Ancestry DNA test in early 2024 revealed that my genes are a staggering 83 per cent from Essex. I’d spat into the tube in the hopes of claiming a European passport from a distant relative; what I got back was the rock-solid knowledge that my family hailed from a kidney-shaped area that ran from Bow to Colchester, via Chelmsford and Southend. Being Anglo-Saxon, there was some Scandinavian and Scottish DNA in there too, but the numbers didn’t lie: my ancestors paddled from Norway, travelled the spine of the UK until they landed in Essex and never left. And who can blame them?
Two of Cathy’s great-great-grandparents tied the knot by Burnham-on-CrouchAlamy
With the help of the Essex Record Office in Colchester, I traced my family history back almost 200 years, analysing ancient, brown-paper copies of the census and birth, death and marriage records to patch it all together. Then I forced my family (born in Surrey and London) into a hire car from the Enterprise on Old Kent Road and we drove up the A12, surely as some ancestors would have done hundreds of years before, to visit the addresses the records had thrown up.
We drove from London to Southend, staying at the peerless Roslin Beach hotel, before driving into the Crouch Valley, a now chichi part of the county known for its winemaking. According to marriage records, two of my great-great-grandparents tied the knot in the All Saints Church in the tiny village of Creeksea, outside a sailing club by Burnham-on-Crouch by the River Crouch. I’m not religious, but standing in the small church garden, staring at the door where my grandparents’ grandparents had once celebrated exchanging vows, did something very strange to me. I’ve since stood outside characterless housing estates in Leytonstone to find the house my Nannie was born in, which doesn’t have quite the same romance. Truly, the only way is Essex.
Childhood on the Californian coast
By Lizzie FrainierI grew up in a small town in northern California, so many of my first holidays were spent exploring the state’s gorgeous coastline. I didn’t realise how lucky I was. Snapshots of road trips, beach days and coastal adventures come back instantly. I can see my younger sister beside me jumping through the waves at sandy Stinson beach, squealing with delight. I can hear my dad’s soundtrack of alternative rock, postpunk and Americana as we ride through LA. I can taste the terrifically messy pork ribs at Pismo Beach, my face sticky with barbecue sauce. I can smell the salty air when my mum and I kayaked past adorable sea otters in the channels of Monterey Bay.
Point Reyes is an hour north of San Franciscogetty images
But there is one place that will always be my favourite and that I remember more than the others: and that is Point Reyes. A national seashore an hour north of San Francisco that I spent long weekends at with my mum, dad and sister, as well as visiting relatives from the UK. My mum loved it, my dad loved it, and so I loved it too. Decades later I’ve returned as an adult with my dad several times for windy walks to the lighthouse, afternoons slurping oysters grown in the bay, and knockout views of the Pacific Ocean. New memories layer over old ones, a patchwork of favourite moments with my favourite people — and it gets better every time.
You can leave Bali, but Bali never leaves you
By Blossom Green The faded sarong my old man brought back from Bali in the Eighties is one of the first things to go in my suitcase when I pack for a trip. It’s pure reflex at this point, the familiar patina a promise of sunshine and halcyon days ahead. Sometimes I don’t even wear it, it’s just, you know, there — a constant wherever in the world I end up, a bit like Orion’s Belt in the sky.
The Island of the Gods had a sort of cult status in my house growing up. My dad visited regularly from the late Seventies, staying at the likes of the Oberoi and later the Amandari, his go-to. It was his happy place, and the tales he regaled with a wry signature smile became like lore. Our house was filled with things he’d brought home. The cover of Victor Mason’s The Haughty Toad and Other Tales is etched on my memory, and one of the trippy mushroom prints he and my mum brought back with them on their first trip now adorns my hallway.
I went for the first time around the age of five or six and, to this day, the morning call of roosters and smell of frangipani can catapult me straight back there. When we returned as a family in 2017 — my parents spending a month out there, me a couple of weeks — we rented a villa for a different take on the island interior. It was so familiar, even thirty-odd years on, and watching the local kids traipse to the same Ubud dance bale (pavilion) I used to go to was enough to bring a nostalgic lump to my usually steadfast throat.My first trip back to the island two years after we lost Dad was bittersweet. We had played gamelan at his funeral and used my sarong on the design for his order of service — his connection to the place was so deep-rooted, I had been nervous about how I’d feel being there without him, but what I loved was how close I felt to the old hippy when I was in situ. Those family trips hadn’t just got under his skin, they’d got under mine too. I’d go back in a heartbeat to connect across the ether again.
Pura Ulun Danu Bratan in Bali, IndonesiaGetty images
Boring old Wales
By Huw OliverFive days in Aberedw? Are you kidding? Mum, please, I can’t do it. It’s in the middle of nowhere and the drive makes me feel sick. The only exciting thing about the village, the tuck shop in next-door neighbour Dilys’s front room, has closed. And there is no wifi or even phone signal. How am I supposed to survive?
This was the story of my school holidays growing up. My grandparents owned a small cottage in this rural village in Powys, just north of the Brecon Beacons. It had belonged to my great-grand-aunt Ethel, who died in the early 1970s. She left it to my grandma, who had fond memories from when she was evacuated here during the war. It was the place my mum and aunt were dragged on holiday as children. Three decades later, my sister and me too — we spent summer after summer being ferried around familiar valleys, going on identical walks, eating the same lasagne in the same pub.
Discover our full guide to Wales
But everything I didn’t like about Aberedw then is everything I love about it now. Whenever I go back, usually with uni friends or my fiancée, Morwenna, I enjoy falling into the Aberedw Routine. Home-cooked food. Mingling with locals at the Seven Stars Inn. Walks up Aberedw Hill, to the common for stone skimming and over to Llywelyn’s Cave, scrawled with centuries of Welsh nationalist graffiti, where the last native prince of Wales is said to have hidden the night before he was killed by the English in the 13th century.
Feeling remote and cut-off is the point, although there is 4G these days. And the faff of the journey — for me, a non-driver, it involves a two-hour train from London to Abergavenny, followed by a 45-minute taxi — enhances every sensation when you’re there (fresher air, tastier pub grub, more chilled vibes).
Many of my most treasured memories relate to Aberedw. I got engaged on the hill, for one. The wheelbarrow race at the 2024 Aberedw Fun Day — one pint of Butty Bach at the start, another half-way through — is also up there. I have been shaped by these hills; I even named my cat Llewy after that cave. My mum, grandparents and Ethel, all of whom are buried beneath the ancient yew trees of St Cewydd’s Church in the village, would be proud.
Do you in-Dorset?
By Laura Jackson As childhood friends departed for two weeks at Center Parcs or on the Algarve, we — my sister, mum and dad — went to the isle of Portland in Dorset. It started with a sweaty, petrol-conserving (read no motorways) three-hour drive from Bristol in a Renault 5 while listening to Chris Rea’s 1987 album Dancing with Strangers, on cassette, and on repeat. If Dad was feeling flush a stop at the Little Chef on the outskirts of Yeovil; the public loos for a freshen-up at Illminster if not.
Portland Bill Lighthouse in DorsetAlamy
Then it was an interminable few weeks on the island. Chip butties the consistency of a camp bed’s mattress; the isle’s threatening low cloud; the pebble beach; and staying at my grandparents’ end-of-terrace cottage, so tall and thin that as an anxious eight-year-old I fretted about it toppling into the sea — I had zero appreciation for the inspirational joy of it. Back in 2021, 20 years after my last visit, I returned to Portland overnight for the first time to skim rocks on Chesil beach, eat crab sandwiches at Portland Bill and stand in front of my grandparents’ cottage in Fortuneswell recalling the time I bounced past it downhill on a Space Hopper. Hell, I miss Chris Rea. Still haven’t made it to Center Parcs. Have returned to Portland more times since.
Away with the fairies in Ireland
By Chris HaslamThe rare visits to Ireland to visit the muintir, or extended family, seem almost mythical. It was as though the fog on the Irish Sea was a thin place, where the boundary between the hard reality of this world came close enough to slip into another world where the fairies were scary and where Oisin found the Islands of Forgetfulness, Victories and Dancing.
There were great gatherings in small houses where I remember the smell of peat smoke and the chatter as endless as the rain. There were ham sandwiches, accompanied by tea, stout and, for the lucky few, whiskey. There were bright-eyed cousins whose names sounded nothing like they were spelt and were meant, it seemed, to be easily forgotten. More easily, and queasily, remembered were the great circles of chairs, stools and cushions from which those cousins, aunts, uncles and the couple from down the lane who no one had invited would rise to demonstrate that Ireland, indeed, had talent with a song, a poem or a dance for which the uncouth rellies from England had no riposte. One year I practised hard a song by Steve Earle — Copperhead Road — to prove that the diaspora could impress too, but blew it in the first verse.
“Ah, we’ll say no more about it,” an aunt sighed, before ushering out an eight-year-old whose name I’ve forgotten for a flawless performance of the first act of Riverdance.
Last October, as the shrinking clan met in a pub in Naas, I mentioned how much I’d missed by being rarely present at those grand get-togethers.
“But you’ve been at them all,” cousin Valerie argued.
“Aye, sure you have,” cousin Gillian agreed. “We only get together when youse lot are over.”
Getting the ferry to France
By Jenny CoadFamily holidays in the Coad household always started with a ferry — I grew up in the southeast, flights were expensive and isn’t it always easier to load up a car when you’re travelling with kids? These days starting a trip with a ship comes with the whiff of not just briny air and diesel but serious nostalgia. I love all the clanging when you rumble on board in the car, all the high-vis and the “whoa” when you’ve gone that bit too close to the car in front. Don’t get me started on the onboard VIP area for lorry drivers. No, I’ve never been in one, but that closed door always had an air of smoke (in my childhood) and mystique.
Jenny Coad as a child and as an adult on the ferry crossing
Of course it’s a lot easier to entertain young children when they can move around freely too, which gives ferries the edge over flights. Our most recent journey on one was to St Malo and it was a glorious early morning crossing in a largely empty (we are still on the non-term-time timetable) ship. Even the croissants weren’t bad. On the way back we had an inexpensive cabin with narrow, crisply clean beds. A ferry and a French picnic (complete with Prince’s biscuits) — what more could you want?
Share your own nostalgic holiday tales in the comments below
