AN advert on the subject of holidays, in the Glasgow Herald of Saturday, July 6, 1946, consisted of a dialogue between a man and his valet. The man conceded that foreign travel had lost some of its appeal because of the war, “even if the landing conditions have no doubt improved since my last visit to the Continent.” As for Scotland in August, it was “almost as noisy as Normandy in June,” he said, evidently recalling the D Day landings. Nevertheless, people were hankering to travel again - keen to explore new cities or to revisit places they had enjoyed before the war intervened and disrupted everything. That Saturday, a Glasgow travel firm, Travel Trips, launched a service from Prestwick to the Isle of Man, two days before the air link between Renfrew airport and the island, suspended during the war, was restored. Travel Trips offered the Scottish Airlines air cruise plus seven days’ hotel accommodation with full board for 15 guineas per head. A photographer recorded the moment (above) when the first passengers disembarked from the 21-seater Douglas airliner. Two such planes would be chartered at first but the company expected to charter another two or three as the service hit its peak. So encouraged was it by the public response that it was hoping to organise air cruises to Belfast, Paris and Copenhagen.

In 1950, it was later estimated, the post-war holiday boom saw one million Britons travelling abroad.