Wednesday 22 June 2022 09:11 AM JANET STREET-PORTER: Why chaos on our trains and planes will never dampen the ... trends now
OK, the trains are not running, our airports are in meltdown, and the London Underground is shut, plagued by a (yet another) staff walkout.
But does that mean we'll stop wanting to travel? Emphatically not!
Cheap travel is one of the greatest benefits of modern living. Right up there with central heating, mobile phones and comfy trainers.
Affordable travel has helped turn the Brits from an inward-looking and distrustful race (always convinced we knew best) into a nation that's more willing to try something new, experience new surroundings, eat different food and learn from other cultures.
Sure, you can log on to a travel blog and feel virtuous about not polluting the planet, but isn't the true experience just so much better? And if it all goes wrong, better stories for the folks back home.
People who sneer at the Brits' addiction to all-inclusive holidays, bargain flights and regular mini breaks are middle-class snobs who generally delight in telling their friends 'we never go abroad in the summer'- probably because they've got a second home in a scenic part of the UK, pricing out locals who can't afford a first home near their place of work.
A crowd of commuters pictured queuing to get on a bus outside Barking Station in East London on Tuesday morning
Kings Cross station in London pictured at rush hour on Tuesday morning amid rail strikes across the UK
A busy terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday as delays continue to affect travel out of Britain due to staff shortages
OK, The trains are not running, our airports are in meltdown, and the London Underground is shut, plagued by a (yet another) staff walkout. But does that mean we'll stop wanting to travel? Emphatically not!
My generation was the first post-war families to save up for summer holidays on the Costa Brava, shunning a fortnight at Butlins or Pontins on a windy beach in the UK for a few days under canvas in the south of France.
Once they'd plucked up the courage to brave 'foreign' food, my parents never holidayed in the UK again. Those first few trips were full of anxiety, though. Uncle Ray took tins of British new potatoes to his camp site in Le Lavandou in the South of France, not to mention British toilet paper and HP Sauce.
Soon, cheap wine and delicious sea food cast a spell, and my aunty and uncle graduated from a tent to a caravan, lugging it all over Europe- although Switzerland was their favourite- 'so clean'!
The strikes by railway workers this week and the appalling queues at our airports won't deter the British from travelling. It's now in our lifeblood. Just as 'shopping' went from an essential task to a leisure activity, travel and taking a break several times a year has become something British people regard as a human right.
The notion of taking a couple of weeks off once a year in the summer when the factories closed (as workers did in the 1950s) is never going to come back. Let the Yanks work their backsides off: the British have become addicted to mini breaks and regular foreign travel, and our culture is all the better for it.
In spite of being more expensive than the USA, and anywhere else in Europe, foreign travel restrictions during the pandemic meant the British have even re-discovered how lovely it is to take a holiday in their own country.
After Covid brought almost two years of restrictions and lockdowns, the only people who seemed surprised that a huge number of us couldn't wait to stuff our hot-weather gear in a suitcase and leave the UK were the bosses of the travel industry.
During lockdown, pundits predicted the start of an new era of nest-building and domesticity. We would never want to leave our homes and sales of DIY gear and garden furniture boomed.
But soon we got sick of
