‘That’s when the shark fins appeared’: your horrifying holidays – from natural disasters to missile threats

With Two Weeks in August and the return of The Four Seasons, TV dramas about nightmare getaways are having a moment. Here are Guardian readers’ tales of their own In early 1969, my parents booked a holiday in Belfast for one week and a bed and breakfast in Dublin for one week. When we arrived at our Belfast destination, The Elsinore Hotel, there wasn’t another car in the parking lot and the hotel was empty except for the aged husband and wife owners. Being 12 years old, I didn’t think too much at the time about the quiet, empty place but the owners invited the whole family down to the dining room every evening and we enjoyed some great meals. Lots of pictures of JFK and the pope adorned many of the hotel walls and being a Catholic family ourselves, the hosts made a big fuss of us. A few days after returning home my dad and I sat in front of the TV eating supper when the BBC newsreader began the broadcast with the announcement that a bomb had gone off that morning in downtown Belfast and had pretty much destroyed The Elsinore Hotel – the purported meeting headquarters of the IRA. My dad spilled his dinner on the floor as he rose from his chair with a loud shout of “Good Go

Jun 17, 2026 → Jun 17, 2026