I spent quite a few years working in England. For the most part, I was touring pantomimes and children’s shows around primary schools as well as the odd community hall/space and theatre. During this time I visited many ‘unfashionable towns’. This might be somewhere like Coventry or Dagenham or Skegness – places you are unlikely to visit on holiday, but have their own charms nonetheless.

I was visiting my parents one afternoon last week and the TV was on in their living room, they still watch traditional TV (I only have subscription based programming available at mine) and there was a show on about holidays. It was one of these Location, Sea, Sand, Sun, Relocate, Holiday Extravaganza shows and they were talking about the Canary Islands – I’ve already pondered on this blog about the similarities between Skye&Lochalsh and places like the canary islands which have also suffered from over tourism (in a more extreme way in their case) but what jumped to mind this time was the concept of holidays and how this has changed over time – and how it might change going forward. In a couple of ways-

1. Some of the more ‘unfashionable’ places I visited before like Skegness, Scarborough or Great Yarmouth – and in Scotland, Ayr, Montrose or Nairn were once very much fashionable. Even places like Blackpool, which still holds on to some tourism are nowhere near the busting hives of tourists that they once were. Is this a glimpse into our future? When the masses from the cities decide something else is cool will they stop coming? The availability of low cost flights abroad spelled the end of the British Seaside town era, but nobody really saw it coming or prepared for it. What’s coming for us that we can’t see?
2. Will people’s mindset towards travel and holidays in general change as society emerges from the COVID 19 pandemic? Perhaps attitudes towards the workplace will change, with more folk working from home. Does that then have the knock-on effect of society being happier in itself, giving people less need to go on holiday to escape their lives (or the ‘rat race’)?

All bubbles burst eventually and it’s my worry that when that happens here, we are left in a cultural and economical desert. Perhaps someone will come to work on Skye in 20 years and wonder why it was ever fashionable.