Coach Touring
By HAROLD CHAMPION A solid-tyred, twenty-seater char-a-bane car- thee first British coach tourists to Switzer- land. The year was 1919; opulent travelling English milords were by that time a fading memory, and Bradford bus conductresses with enough money for a fortnight's holiday in Lugano (first-class rail and sea) had not yet come upon the scene. The Swiss, of course, have never been slow to recognise touristic portents. They certainly saw the significance of that dust-raising bone- shaker and showered gifts of candy and kirsch upon its pioneer passengers who cheered, sang and waved their way through the tranquil villages. Somewhere along the well-signposted Bale to Lucerne main road the driver lost his way and
with some difficulty extricated his vehicle from a winding lane which petered out in lush cow pastures. Since then the British coach-touring industry has never looked back.
During the early. Thirties, it must be conceded,
British coach excursionists did not enjoy the high esteem in some European countries they do now. They tended to take their pleasures rather in the manner of a Wakes Week trip to Blackpool: there were the same rollicking songs, the same cheery shouts and fluttering flags for greeting passing pedestrians and motorists. Sometimes, too, the potency of local liquors was catastrophically underrated. As time went on many tours became a lot more sophisticated than that, but enough of the less inhibited kind remained to make sedater British travellers think twice about taking coaching holidays.
Today things are very different. Those luxury coaches heading out of Ostend or Luxembourg to Switzerland, Italy or Spain transport a fair cross- section of the British travelling public, from the first-time-abroad maiden lady to the experienced motorist who, having taken his own car to the Continent year after year, feels the time has come to let somebody else do the driving.
Coach touring has, in fact, developed into very
big business—so big that many specialist agencies issue hundreds of thousands of multi-paged, full- colour brochures every year. People contemplat- ing this kind of holiday are, indeed, confronted with an emburras de choix. Which company? (More 'than seventy compete with each other in the United Kingdom.) What length of tour? First or second class? And, of course, which countries? These are hard questions to resolve if one has never ventured on such a tour before, but any travel agent will be ready to give informed advice.
One thing is certain : no matter what company
or tour one chooses, value for money is assured— intense competition takes care of that. Yet, as with wine, it usually pays to avoid the cheapest. Mini- mum prices—and this year they are astonishingly low—can provide only minimum hotels and restaurants. A wise principle is to go for the most expensive one's- pocket allows—front rooms are
so much better than those at the back, and a large part of the fun of a continental holiday is lost if one does not eat well.
What, in any case, is included in every tour is transport in modern vehicles (many are based on Ostend, Luxembourg or similar near-at-hand centres, travellers being transported thither by rail and sea, or by air—it's all in the fare). accommodation at hotels carefully inspected by experts long before the itineraries are arranged, and all meals en route. Baggage is taken care of at night stops and always a polyglot courier is at hand to point out places and customs of interest and to smooth out such difficulties as may be in- volved in getting from one country into another. Passengers can relax in their comfortable seats, without worrying about where lunch is to be eaten or where they will stay the night, giving them- selves up to the joys of observing the passing scene through broad windows. Many operators, no doubt, used to overdo things. Their interpretation of average taste led them to plan marathon daily drives starting early and ending late, with only the briefest stops on the way. Of course, there are ail' plenty of people around who delight in covering as much ground and crossing as many frontiers as possible during their annual foktnight. They will find no difficulty in doing so on a coach tour. But it dawned upon the operators a year or two ago that there are enough of us who like to take things easily to make it good business to arrange some less arduous programmes. So now it is possible to book a holiday involving, perhaps, one week's driving and a week's stay at the destination. The London firm of Fourways, for example, offer Several tours of this nature. For 521 guineas they will take you to Lucerne via Brussels and Bale, returning via Offenberg and Coblenz, allowing a seven-day stay at the Hotel Europe in Lucerne— a thirteen-day holiday without undue strain. Most companies now arrange adequate stops for re- freshment and sightseeing. Thomas'Cook and Son make a big point of this, stressing it in their elabor- ate sixty-odd-page brochure Holidaymaking with the slogan 'Tour Awhile—Stay Awhile.' They offer, for example, a fifteen-day tour to France and Switzerland for 52 guineas, with six days' stay at the Grand Hotel in Tremezzo-Cadenabbia on Lake Como. Incidentally, the most elaborate Cook's coach tour costs a minimum of 185 guineas and includes thirty-one days' travel through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy (as far as Rome, Naples, Florence and Assisi) and Switzerland. There seems to be plenty of 'time off' for sightseeing.
The colourful cover of Global Tours' fifty- page brochure bears the legend 'This Is Your Continent,' and to reinforce the message a genial footman is depicted bearing a parcel containing
a sunny bay, golden sand, palm trees and other delightful ingredients of a romantic holiday. This company's policy is to offer very low-priced tours, ranging from 32 guineas for an eight-day tour from London to Paris, Brussels and The Hague, with two-night stops at each place.
Linjebuss International's coaches are encoun- tered all over Europe during the spring and sum- mer. They announce regular services as well as tours—for instance, from Paris to Helsingborg (Sweden) via Paris, Epernay, Brussels, Arnhem, Hamburg and Elsinore, a four-day trip. The fare is £21 17s, one way, inclusive of meals and accom- modation. The cheapest regular service run by this company is from Paris to Geneva—two days for £7 4s.
Frames Tours Ltd. are among the oldest established of all coach-touring companies (they do not confine their business to coaching, how- ever), and are perhaps the principal carrier of United States and Commonwealth visitors who see Britain first and Europe afterwards. One of their most attractive holidays this year will, I think, be 'The Scenic Route to Austria,' which combines a six-day tour through Belgium, Germany, Swit- zerland, Luxembourg and France with a seven- day stay at some such Austrian resort as Inns-
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