Britons Sleep Out In Warm Holiday Weather

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27726, 2 August 1955, Page 13

Britons Sleep Out In Warm Holiday Weather

(Rec. 11.30 p.m.) LONDON, August 1. Thousands of holiday-makers sleeping on beaches woke in a sunny dawn today for the August Bank Holiday— Britain’s seaside day of the year. So many thousand took advantage of the glorious weather to spend the weekend at coastal resorts that all hotels and boardinghouses in dozens of towns were booked out. The “Daily Express” reported: “They slept on beaches in deck chairs, in tents and cars, in scooped-out hollows in the sand—they slept anywhere.” A “Daily Express” report at midnight from the south coast resort, Brighton, said: “The front is like Piccadilly Circus. Cafes and seafood stalls are being kept open all night. Deck chairs costing 6d for a whole night are the cheapest holiday week-end accommodation of the year for those who could not find rooms. They are still bathing in the sea by floodlight; but who wants a floodlight? The moon is full.” A report from Southend, on the east coast, said: “The town is bursting at the seams. Hundreds of people are still strolling on the front. Hundreds did not even bother to try to book rooms when they realised the night would be warm. ’ July was the sunniest in several parts of Britain for at least 75 years, ‘The

Times” reported today. It is already evident, on incomplete returns, that for north-west England, north and west Wales and much of Eire and Northern Ireland, that this July was the sunniest on record —and in some cases the records go back to 1880. Many towns had an average of 10 hours of sunshine a day for each of the 31 days, and an absolute drought of 28 days in the sunniest areas was the longest ever recorded.