A first holiday abroad without parents
It’s a July morning in 1995 and I’m at Pond Street bus station in Sheffield getting on a Shearings coach heading to Santa Susanna on the Costa Brava. I’m 17 years old and with my good mate Jim and this is our first holiday abroad without parents. We are young, gangly and giddy.
We are sat behind Cyril and Leslie an elderly couple who’ve been on the coach since it picked them up in Leeds. Cyril doesn’t like us from the moment our eyes meet, but we don’t care — we have escaped our parents for 10 days of fun. We learn on the coach it’s only 7 days actual holiday time as there’s a 36 hour coach journey each way. The news doesn’t dampen our mood though; we are on our way and we are already planning our first beer.
A few hours later we arrived at Dover and boarded a P&O ferry across the channel. We stand at the back of the ferry waving bye to blighty. This is it, this is real travel. “It’s cold.” says Jim. We head inside for a warm and a tour of the boat. There’s not much to do aside from sit carpeted seats and feel queasy for an hour.
A tannoy announcement tells passengers to head back to their vehicles. We’re still queuing at the onboard shop for an emergency purchase and I start to panic that the coach will leave without us. “Give over soft lad” says Jim.
We’re the last ones to board the coach and the driver makes it clear he’s not happy as I climb the steps. Jim follows close behind, balancing a tray of 24 cans of Fosters on his head. The coach erupts in laughter. Cyril winks and says “Good work lads. One going spare?”. We have a new mate. The emergency purchase works its charm.
Dawn breaks somewhere south of Paris and we pull into a service station. Jim makes a dash for the toilet and I head into the shop for some food. Jim is livid. “There’s just a hole in the floor.”. It might be a long week.
By early evening we pull up outside our hotel for the week. The Hotel Tahiti Playa is paradise; bars, restaurants, pools, a pool bar and girls we’ll never have courage to speak to. It’s right next to a beach of golden sand and the warm Mediterranean sea beckons us in.
We can’t go in now though as we’ve managed to arrive in time for the evening meal. We head up to the restaurant and gaze at the mouth-watering array of food; burgers in boiled water, french fries, watermelon, grapes, rice, peaches in syrup. We pile our plates high and head to our table. The Hotel Tahiti Playa has shared dining so we share this, and every meal, with Dave and Cheryl from Barnsley and their two young daughters. We get on brilliantly for the entire week, they are a delight. They even sent us a Christmas card that year.
We take the week as it comes; spontaneous adventure for a pair of teenagers. We head for a beer and wander around Santa Susana’s town centre. The first challenge of the holiday awaits; a train track needs to be crossed to get to the centre. Perfectly fine now, terrifying for later on after a few drinks. I don’t remember any bridges but looking at Google Street View to refresh my memory, I also don’t remember the fence being there either. I’m quite sure it wasn’t there.
We spend our days drinking, messing about in the pool, heading to the beach and quickly hating sand. On one of the first nights we head down to the bar — post boiled hamburguesa — and swiftly down a few local beers. The DJ starts playing Macarena by Los Del Rio. We’re up, cranking out our best dance moves.
40 years on I still vividly remember wearing an orange shirt and a pair of speckled/checked trousers. Both bought especially for the holiday from Bankrupt Clothing on Charles Street, Sheffield. The night after we got chatting to a couple of Dutch lads and asked them to teach us some words. Still remember that hek means ‘gate’. After a few days we pluck up the courage to ask a couple of girls for a drink and head to a nightclub bar across the train tracks. I can still picture us howling with laughter as we clicked a very happy ‘cheers’ and guzzled the litre glasses of beer. Memories are funny things.
One evening half way through the week we ventured down to the beach to go parasailing, where you’re attached to a parachute which is pulled by a speedboat. Jim goes first, the speedboat doing a huge arc of the shoreline. Ten minutes later he returns, gratefully drifting towards the beach. “That was bloody brilliant!” shouts Jim across the beach.
It’s my turn next and I’m buckled into the straps with the brief instruction of pulling a strap when it’s time to head back to dry land. It really was wonderful up there, so quiet and silent, as if all someone had pressed pause on life’s noises. The boat turns back towards the beach and my time is up. The guy on the beach waves at me, pumping his arm up and down showing me how to head back to earth. Picture how you’d mime a lorry driver to honk their horn. I grab the strap on with my right hand and pump my arm slowly up and down mirroring the guy. Every time I pull down, the parachute closes and I drift downwards. And every time I let go, I drift back skywards. I’m now an embarrassed and increasingly panicking teenager dangling from a parachute. I’m hopping across the beach, upwards and downwards. The rep guy is livid, screaming at me in broken English “NO PULL! HOLD!”. There’s several hundred people on the beach enjoying the late afternoon sun. I’m terrified and embarrassed beyond belief. I can hear the howls of laughter. The rep tells Jim to shout instructions to me “JUST PULL THE STRAP DOWN. DON’T LET GO, DICKHEAD!”. The boat runs out of shore and swiftly heads away from the beach, circling to do another loop.
I managed to land at the second attempt, it was quite easy. My face is a deep shade of crimson. The laughter from the beach is louder than expected. Still up there as the most embarrassing thing I’ve done (and there’s been a few).
The rest of the holiday ran the same course. It was wonderful. The 36 hour return coach journey whilst hungover was less fun.
Happy holidays, cheers Jim.
