Amid all the Covid-19 coverage, it’s hardly surprising that the collapse of a coach-tour operator last week didn’t make too many headlines. But the end of Shearings, the largest such operator in Europe, could mean the end of coach holidays in the UK, and if that happens, something very special will have been lost.
Coach holidays are unique. They engender a sense of camaraderie which is so hard to find nowadays in our very atomised world. You begin the week as strangers, waiting for the departure bay number of your coach to be called out, and end it exchanging addresses. There’s great anticipation as you take your seats on the main coach and the driver introduces himself and tells you the week’s itinerary, and a sadness when the holiday ends and you have to say your goodbyes at a service station in the south Midlands.
On our first Shearings holiday, a very sweet couple from Kent, with whom we had breakfasted on our first morning and got on well with throughout, slipped my wife and me a little package, exhorting us not to open it until we got back home.
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