by It is 1972 and four teenagers from Halifax enjoy their first taste of freedom on an all-girl vacation in Torquay. The short vacation of age is from its time: a week drinks sweet cider, sleeps in a static caravan and walk over the promenade in the Devon resort, which soon fame as a setting for the Faulty Towers.
A photo of a Torbay photographer captures the moment: Marion, Susan, Mary and Carol arm in the arm next to a parked Ford Corsair and a large hotel, all mini skirts and a wide smile.
It was Susan Morris’ idea of creating the photo again, she says. Over the years, it has become an estimated memorial for the four women who were half a century, seven children and 15 grandchildren later half a century, for half a century.
The group returned to Torquay to celebrate their 70th birthdays. Susan explains: “I passed the photo round when we were eating and said: ‘Real girl, how would you like to create it again?’ They dropped their knives and forks and thought that I had gone completely crazy!
Three of the friends still live in Halifax, and Carol Ansbro split their time between Spain and their home master Yorkshire. The historical re -enactment took place last summer and carried out detailed preparation. The hotel on the original photo was demolished, which led to confusion, where exactly the four girls were. Clothing was another problem that Chelsea Girl, the most popular outfitter in women from 1972, has long been gone.
“We searched charities and searched Vinted,” says Carol about her efforts. “I had bought my dress online and it took two of them to get me,” laughs Mary Helliwell about her attempt to imitate her seventies.
Carol’s husband, a retired journalist, wrote a story about the stunt for her local newspaper last November, and it became viral – much for the amusement of the friends. “To say that we were shocked by the answer is an understatement,” says Carol. “I had friends in Dubai and Perth said they had seen us on the BBC. The whole attention made four Oaps very happy.”
Growing trend
Similar attempts, old photos, especially holiday snapshots, have proven to be popular on social media. The trend accompanies an appetite for “Victory Lap” sades, in which the British checked holiday destinations of their youth, from interaction to Europe to backpacks throughout India, but with more money in their pockets.
Sam Clark, the co -founder of the Experience Travel Group, says: “Usually, customers are packed back in their youth through places like Thailand and are now returning with more time and money with children and perhaps grandchildren to do it differently with more purpose.” For Marion, Susan, Mary and Carol, this caravan of the 1970s was replaced by a comfortable hotel.
The Cornish sisters Tracey Waygood, Elaine McCartney and Pam Cook also received a lot of attention last year after they reproduced a photo in 1980 on their favorite beach in Falmouth. The three siblings aged 60, 66 and 70 at the age of 60, who posed in Bikinis after four decades, also included the 1980s.
“I wanted to create the picture again for a few years,” says Pam. “It became more urgent than my sister Elaine [pictured centre] Developed dementia – we thought it was now or never. “
“We went a few swimming and then a young lady from the Castle Beach Café, Jess, took the photo for us and told us to see the original photo of how to put our hands,” says Tracey Waygood, a civil servant in Devon, but grew up in Penryn.
For the sisters, the journey into the past was an opportunity for family loyalty.
“Castle Beach has always been our family beach,” explains Tracey. “Mama would make pastes, my father, who worked in the docks, came down and struck us. My brother worked across the street in the Royal Duchy Hotel.”
“We had so much fun that day,” says Pam. “We did not take into account that we would be picked up by the local newspaper, The Falmouth packageFor a cover story and dignity viral! If I knew that friends in New Zealand would see the photo on social media, I would have brushed my hair and put on Lippy! “
Mental advantages
Charlotte Russell, clinical psychologist and founder of The travel psychologist Blog believes that the trend is good for mental health.
“Comping photos of families and friends is a great way to honor and enjoy the original experience, which is psychologically an advantage for us,” she says. “We can take the opportunity to think about what has changed since the original photo and how our paths of life may have grown apart and grew together.”
Simon Roberts, 67, is the founder of the tour operator who paints her travels. A few years ago, he created an estimated family who was taken in 2000 at a campsite in Devon, in which he with his toddler Angus Angus and his niece Safron with his toddler nephew R100GS -Motorrad.
Simon’s first woman died two years after the photo and in 2005 he began an epic motorcycle trip through Europe to Nepal when he worked on his life as a widower and drove the same motorcycle. “There is a lot of emotions and history in the photo,” he explains.
The success of an image recreation project is due to the willingness and extra version of the topics, as I discovered last month when I twisted my mom and weapons of my brother to create a shot in 1982 on vacation near my late grandmother in the Peak distribution.
In the faded original we sit on a bridge over a stream. I am impressively plump and my two -year -old brother wears red rubber when my mother smiles shyly in the trend in the trend in the trend in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the results of our 2025 repetition will become viral.
My brother, mom and I had to choose our way through barbed wire and via cowpats to the original place, where the bridge was now hidden from grass. An outbuilding on the right of the original frame now ruined the angle of the photo, and while I made a similar view of my toddlers, my brother, a self-confident 40-year-old, either refused to wear a cream-all-in one route.
Simon advises colleagues on vacation photo not to take that Mise-en-scène too seriously. “Remember that the beach may not be as beautiful as 20 years ago that you may not be able to find the original point of view and that you may not look as good in a bikini,” he says. “So have fun with it.”
