The worst summer holidays ever

At Between the Sheets we love holidays. But that doesn’t mean they can’t sometimes go wrong. June’s Book of the Month, the hilarious Operation Sunshine, has got us thinking about the holiday adventures we wish we’d forgotten. If only we could . . .

Don’t forget to be in touch if you’ve got any – trust us, it’s therapeutic!

‘Most of my childhood memories of bad holidays involve camping on the cheap in France. Burned forever on my brain is the humiliating experience of being about 5 and having to stand up in a plastic basin (‘the bath’), while my mum poured not even lukewarm water over my head (‘the shower’), as the communal showers were so dank and dirty. The other terrifying bathroom horror was trying to go to the loo and discovering that it was literally a hole in the ground with handles fixed on to the cubicle walls. I couldn’t get my head around assuming some sort of odd skiing position to relieve my bladder – call me old fashioned, but I do prefer ceramic furniture in my bathroom.’

‘Awful moment when I was chased and then surrounded by cows in Cornwall. Working as a team, they backed me to the edge of a cliff and then surrounded me in a very sinister fashion. I made my sister crawl through the cows (she’s more of an animal lover than I am) and then run for help. Still have flashbacks of their rolling eyes and frothing mouths. Perhaps this is why I’m veggie?’

‘When I trod on a sea anemone was pretty bad. All its black spikes shot up into my foot and there was a lot of crying and hobbling around before they were all out again. Tweezers + nail scissors + squeamishness = unsuccessful home surgery.’

‘I hadn’t learnt my lesson about camping by the time I took a mini break with an old boyfriend. We set up the tent, happy as you like, then strolled down to a beach to sit and soak up the sun. As it turned out, ALL the sun. The sea breeze distracted us from the fact we were turning lobster red and by the time we realised, it was far too late to stop the burn. We spent two days embarrassedly holed up in the tent, too ashamed to leave it, furtively eating takeaways and drinking beer to numb the pain. Fun in its way, but I’d much rather have done all those things sitting on my own sofa, not generating my own heat source from my red face.’

‘Camping in Ibiza. Should have known it was a bad idea when my friend rang an hour before we were due to depart for the airport to tell me she’d been locked out of her flat and her passport and tickets were inside – to this day I’m not quite sure how she managed to break in and retrieve them. And, oh, she might have appendicitis and not be able to travel (later diagnosed as stomach ache). We arrived in Ibiza with nowhere to stay, ended up sleeping on a picnic table for the first night before finding a space in an over-crowded field behind one of the noisiest clubs in San Antonio. The showers had no hot water so had terrible colds by the end of the week; the constant sound of bass gave us tinnitus and then friend and I fell out and had to share a tent in grumpy silence for the last two nights. So relieved to come home, and have never tried to do ‘spontaneous and unplanned’ holidaying since!’

‘Jordan (the place, just to clarify). Was very ill with some terrible bug and despite my off-the-thermometer temperature and racing pulse, heartless family decided to go out for a nice lunch leaving me to die in the hotel room with only the TV and the cleaners for company. Surreal dreams of men coming into room to make swans out of hair towels and Friends dubbed in Arabic. When family returned from lunch they were heartened to hear from the hotel owner than I’d be spotted walking round the hotel – to this day I swear I never left my bed, let alone the room, but family refuse to believe that was suffering terribly and instead insist I was enjoying nice strolls round the premises.’

‘We had a two week holiday in China last summer, which on the whole was fantastic, with the exception of one part of it. We’d been told that the only way to see the spectacular Three Gorges was on a cruise ship. Neither I nor my hubby liked the idea of being hemmed in with a boat-load of tourists for three days and this was exactly the sort of holiday we normally avoided, but we were persuaded it was the only option.  When we arrived on board, all our worst fears came true. The cabin was tiny and smelt of wet dog. Within seconds of unpacking, the loo had overflowed and we were left desperately bailing out water into the bath whilst waiting for a member of the crew to come and fix it. The occupant on the floor above had clearly packed his dumb-bells and enjoyed dropping them with the most enormous crash you’ve ever heard every 15 minutes. Clearly no lurking in the room was going to be possible, but it was whilst attending the compulsory Captain’s Briefing that panic really set in.  There was only one bar on board and every night entertainment was staged. Day one, we were told, was talent night: ‘So even if you roll tongue or wiggle ears, we get you up on stage!', the worryingly smiley Chinese crew threatened. The second night was a crew fashion show, with dancing, and again, audience participation was required.  Then we heard that we were going to be placed with the same table of fellow tourists for every breakfast, lunch and dinner, where ‘You make friends for life!’ I was apparently going whiter and whiter throughout this talk and at this last news (having seen our fellow tourists) my husband tells me I grabbed his knee in an iron grip and whispered through clenched teeth that if we didn’t get off the boat right now I was jumping. He was only able to ply me with more gin in consolation. During the rare trips to shore, we were herded around like goats, having been allotted group loo times and set opportunities to take photos – there was to be no spontaneity. Our table of ‘friends for life’ were hideously loud Americans in their sixties called Chuck, Doug and Malc, and their jewel-encrusted wives, who were ‘Doing the East this year’. The spectacular Three Gorges scenery only lasted one day and during the remaining two, we sailed through a city of 33 million people, which was so polluted you didn’t want to go out on deck for fear of getting poisoned. It’s Cornwall this year, in complete isolation from other humans – and any tongue curling will just be over ice cream: yippee!’

‘I did the Baltic leg of the Tall Ships 2000 race with school friends during my summer holidays. It was an amazing experience to sail a 40-metre tall ship from Finland to Sweden, Germany and Denmark, and with the sun shining on the water it was a fantastic way to spend a summer with friends. But when the weather turned towards the end of our trip, it wasn’t quite so pleasant! There’s nothing quite like sitting on the deck of a sailing ship in the pitch black, up to your waist in salt water so hooked to a railing, being violently sick for hours on end. At one point I remember the bosun saying to me, ‘Don’t worry, there’s no way you can be this sea sick for more than 3 days. If it doesn’t kill you, you’ll get over it.’ ‘Character-building’, apparently . . .’

‘I loved Madonna, would have travelled the world to see her . . . until an ill advised mini-break to Paris left me unable to listen to her warble another note without having to lie down in a darkened room. It seemed so simple: we couldn’t get tickets to the London gigs, so why not ‘pop over’ to Paris for the night on an all expenses paid coach trip? Heck we were young, we were reckless, and a midnight ferry crossing sounded wicked. I don’t know when alarm bells started ringing . . . maybe it was the mystery meeting point (a grubby disused pub behind Victoria station), or maybe it was the choice of travel companions (an unruly band of pink-Stetson wearing, old enough to know better, die-hards). We were like lambs to the slaughter. The following sums the trip up in the quickest (and most painless way): 24 hours of non-stop ‘Madonnaoke’; finding solace in the kids’ play area on the ferry to hide from Candy from Coventry (who’d come as Madonna circa 1985 complete with conical bra . . ., on her own to meet ‘like minded people’); trying to revive my friend who was so traumatised by the experience she’d chosen to neck the vodka she’d bought for her mum in duty free; the terrifying Parisian hotel (where the Madonnaoke continued full pelt); the concert performed in FRENCH (another string to M’s bow . . . and a painful reminder that I should have paid more attention in class); fleeing the hotel under the cover of darkness as a rather excitable post-concert Candy was chucked out for trashing her room and holding back the other revellers who wanted to ‘go back and finish the job’; weeping as we saw the white cliffs of Dover . . . running into my father’s arms as we fled our captors at a service station on the M20.’

Posted 16/06/2008 17:07:00 by The Between the Sheets team with 0 comments.