Wish You Were Still Here : The Scottish Seaside Holiday

An illustrated social history of the Scottish seaside holiday. As one of our key forms of leisure and mass entertainment, tourism was a major growth industry of the 19th century and this growth continued into the 20th century.

Starting in the golden age of the Victorian and Edwardian resorts, the author explores the ways and means whereby the Scottish people were enabled to enjoy the benefits of seaside and other holidays. This includes how they traveled, the things they did and where they stayed. The book, therefore, is not just about the holidaymakers but embraces too the many people in the resorts who made their livelihood in the tourist industry. A wide choice of pictures and other illustrations, even some naughty postcards, are used to explain the nature of the traditional seaside holiday and how holiday resorts and holiday-going changed and developed during the course of the 20th century and in the early years of the 21st.
Sporting activities, and for spectators no less than participants, were and still are very important, especially golf. So too was swimming and one of the extraordinary features of the early 20th century was the craze for building open-air seawater swimming pools in a country that is not renowned for great warmth. As the author shows, many Scottish towns, both large and small, were quite prepared to run into debt to construct the very many open-air swimming ponds that once dotted the coastline. In the wee quiet places where there was little in the way of ready-made entertainment, holidaymakers had to find their own ways of spending their time. In such resorts bathing, tennis, golf and other sports were, therefore, favored activities.