A pensioner from Arnold with a passion for coaching holidays has now racked up over 300 trips with one Notts firm
Pamela Quigley (80), has remained loyal to Skills Holidays since first catching the travel bug back in 1938 on an excursion with her parents.
Her first memory of travelling on a coach was when she was 10 years old, going on day outings to start with and meeting up with the motor bike club of which her father was a member.
Family holidays then turned into weekend trips with Skills Holidays, and Pamela fondly remembers fun family weekends away with her parents, and then younger brother to places such a Skegness, Bridlington and Matlock.
After meeting her husband, Pamela has continued with her love of coach holidays and the two have travelled all over the UK as a couple.
Even after 80 years of coach holidays, Pamela isn’t ready to slow down. The pair have been on three trips already this year, the latest one to Chester with a visit to Chester Zoo earlier this month and they have three ore trips booked in already for the rest of the year.
Pamela said: “We like to travel with Skills because of the great range of two-day breaks they offer.”
“It’s great that they offer places like Scarborough (one of my favourites) and Yorkshire but that there is always something to do on that second day, an activity like visiting the zoo or old railway.”
Although she has travelled abroad with Skills Holidays to Austria and Ireland once or twice, Pamela is much keener on seeing all the great places on offer in the UK and has even started going on the Skills city breaks and visited Leeds for the first time recently.
The early memories of happy family coach holidays to the seaside have stuck with Pamela though and Scarborough is still her coach trip of choice when asked.
“The coaches are a lot more modern now obviously than when I travelled as a child, but not much else has changed. We like the coach holidays for convenience, we mostly get picked up in Arnold and we get to see and experience so many different places and activities.” added Pamela.
“In the early days we used to recognise some familiar faces, but people are changing jobs more and more often now. There is one lady coach driver Alexandria who took us to Ireland who we still recognise and speak to, especially if we ever visit the garage for meetings or open days.”
Skills will be celebrating its centenary next year.
For more information please visit: http://skills.co.uk/
