Travel

Over the last fifty years or so, international travel has become much easier and more accessible to the general public. The availability of packaged holidays, however, have given rise to the ‘Britain away from Britain’ concept of holiday resorts providing all the comforts the unimaginative need away from home, and simply benefitting from the improved holiday weather of more exotic locations.

But is this British attitude to travel because the British population is unimaginative, unadventurous and deeply suspicious of all things foreign, or are there deeper, historical precedents?

The rise of the British lower middle-class throughout Victorian England, and the emergence of National holidays and the radical introduction of two weeks of paid holiday time per year, can arguably be called the beginning of British travel mentality. Until the rise of the commercial airlines after World War Two, few could afford the time it took to travel the world, let alone the money. So, to give this new class of office worker somewhere to spend their leisure time, the British seaside resort rose up. Coinciding with rapid expanses in the railways and advances in train technology, people with their limited time off could get to where they wanted to go, and see what they wanted to see, without having to worry about the daily tasks involved.

So perhaps this is the reason behind the little travelling British travellers actually do—the tradition of British holidays is to go somewhere you don’t have to work and forget, for a little, what you’re returning to. Let the bored or curious rich explore the ruins of the jungles, they don’t have to go back to work on Monday.