Summer holiday memories and plans from Leeds

Leeds locals share their summer plans and reflect on their favourite holiday moments.

Transcript

00:00 My favourite holiday was 1969 and I went to Butlins with four mates and we just had a

00:09 ball and we were just starting to drink and the variety of bars that you get at Butlins,

00:18 this was just finally, it was only like an hour away, and I remember sat in the Hawaiian

00:24 bar and turned around and there was a stream running through. I mean I've never seen anything

00:30 like it, certainly not in Holbeck anyway. Best summer if I remember it correctly, I

00:36 think it was the summer of 77, heat waves, stamp pipes, we played out all day long, it

00:42 was just amazing, full six weeks of sunshine, what a great time that was to grope. I was

00:47 about 10, 11 then, brilliant time to grope. Summers these days, locally we love to go

00:54 to Whitby, Camping Stamford Bridge, places like that, and obviously at our age now we're

00:59 able to go abroad, so like Tenerife and anywhere we can get really, just for a little bit of

01:06 sun and to enjoy ourselves. But this is a great country if you get the weather in this

01:10 country, it's great. If you don't, it can be a bit of a downer, it's a bit of a gamble,

01:15 but the weather guaranteed in this country, you stay in this country and you have a fantastic

01:19 time. Because I'm not a very good flyer, we spend a lot of our holidays in the UK anyway,

01:24 so a lot of our time is spent going to all the different coasts. One particular memory

01:28 that I have is with myself and my partner and my children, driving around the south

01:32 coast for three weeks, stopping and starting at all the different attractions down there,

01:35 which we probably wouldn't do again because they're now grown up children. In terms of

01:39 up here in Yorkshire, just going to Scarborough is a fantastic day out for us and it's easy

01:43 to get to from the train station here at Crossgate, so it's great stuff. I'm from a youth group

01:48 called the VYG and so this summer we're actually planning on going out, doing all sorts of

01:55 activities, not for only ourselves, but for the youth as well. So actually what we're

02:01 doing right now in town, we're trying to get as much youth as possible to bring them closer

02:07 to us, to separate them from committing something like crime because of anger. I suppose the

02:16 summer I look back fondly to is 1964, the first summer season I did. I'd been working

02:23 in a drawing office in Coventry and decided playing the saxophone would be more fun, so

02:30 I got myself a job for 22 weeks at my Ned on Butlins. Now I know Butlins probably gets

02:37 people some questionable memories, but in those days it was very popular. I accompanied

02:44 people like Bud Flanagan, Billy Dainty, John Pertwee and so on. I mean they're dated names

02:52 now, forgotten probably by most people who'll be watching this, but they were quite au courant,

03:00 fashionable in the swim then and it's delightful for me.