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The Main Street in Douglas
It lies immediately behind the Promenade. You can buy anytking from a kipper to an
evening dress ther§. Holiday
ma~ers
stroll there every morning. There on Saturday
nights the natives d.iscuss last week's news,_do next week's shopping.
From Victoria Pier
to
Onchan
By
Horse Tram
It's a feature of Douglas, this horse-drawn toast-rack tram. It takes you along
the Promenade-2 miles in
40
minutesJor 4d. . If you are in a hurry, you can
24
take a bus. But most people prefer this way.
Seventy
mil~s
out
in
the Irish
'Sea
is Douglas.
Every summer, half a millidn people from Eng–
land's
indus~rial
north spend their horidays there
I
F you visit the Liverpool landing-stage any Saturday morning
from May to October, you
will
see crowds of peuple
all
making for the one spot. It
is
the same at Fleetwood and
Heysham and Whitehaven. The crowds are not there just for
fishing. Nor are they boarding a liner for·New York. It's some-
thing much more momentoUS than that.
.
T!}ey are going to the Isle of Man. They are going on their
annual holiday. And an annual holiday to these people means a
good deal more than a holiday to many other folk. They are
mostly from the industrial towns of
Lan~shire
and Yorkshire.
For
fifty
weeks of the year, they have toiled in mills, spinning and
weaving cotton and cloth for half
~he
world. Now it
is
their
"Wakes," their holiday-and they are going to make the best of
it. That is why they go to Douglas in the Isle ofMan.
It i§
a
'lC?ng journey. After an hour or so by train, they' are
waiting for the boa1; that will take them the
70
miles from the
,
mainland to the island. The
Lady '
of Mann,
the
Ben-my-·Chree
t -
andMona's Isle
are household names in Lancashire and Yorkshire.
. . In
reality, they and their sister ships are large, comfortable boats
I
t;hat make the journey to and from the island summer and winter.
Insuminer,
it
is' a pleasant 4-hour run-"calm as a millpond"
is tl;J.e recognised first remark a guest makes in a Douglas board–
ing-h9use. In winter, the Irish Sea can be a most unpleasant
place. Rarely is the steamship service disorganised, however, .
though sometimes the trip may take as long as. six hours.
Why is Douglas the mecca of so.many thousands? What does
it offer?
.
As the boat
~proaches
Douglas Bay, the front looks very
much like the front of any other seaside resort----a large crescent
of houses and hotels, a beach packed with bathers and a rocky
headland at either end. You pull into the Victoria Pier. You
trudge the
1,100
feet ofthe Victoria Pier-and
if
you'd happened to
, An
Old Douglas Custom
When you come
to
Douglas, you come
'to
get all the air you can.
You don't waste time gossiping in the lounge of your boarding-hoWie
-you
sit
out on the steps: Average charge
is
7s. 6d. a day for board.