four young women walk arm in arm, smiling and laughing, on a beach promenade. They’re dressed in mini skirts and flip flops, and there’s what looks like a 1960s Ford Corsair in the background. This is clearly a snapshot from a bygone era, but there’s something about the picture — the womens’ expressions, their laughs — that captures a timeless and universal feeling of joy, youth and adventure.
For the four women in the photo, Marion Bamforth, Sue Morris, Carol Ansbro and Mary Helliwell, the picture is a firm favorite. Taken over 50 years ago on a group vacation to the English seaside town of Torquay, Devon, the photo’s since become symbolic of their now decades-long friendship. Whenever they see the picture, they’re transported back to the excitement of that first trip together.
“It’s always been our memory of Torquay,” Sue Morris tells CNN Travel. “The iconic photograph — which is why I got the idea of trying to recreate it.”
‘The iconic photograph’
Bamforth, Morris, Ansbro and Helliwell were 17 when the photo was taken, “by one of these roving photographers that used to roam the promenade and prey on tourists like us,” as Morris recalls it.
It was the summer of 1972 and the four high school classmates — who grew up in the city of Halifax, in the north of England — were staying in a rented caravan in coastal Devon, in southwest England. It was a week of laughs, staying out late, flirting with boys in fish and chip shops, sunburn, swapping clothes, sharing secrets and making memories by the seaside.
Fast forward to 2024 and Bamforth, Morris, Ansbro and Helliwell remain firm friends. They’ve been by each other’s sides as they’ve carved out careers, fallen in love, brought up families and gone through heartbreak and grief.
Over the years, the foursome have enjoyed adventures together to destinations including Majorca and Portugal.
And this year, to celebrate turning 70, they decided to return to Torquay, where it all began.
“We always said, when we were younger, that one day we would go back to Torquay,” Ansbro tells CNN Travel. “And because we were reaching the big 7-0, we decided to finally go. Then Susan decided she’d love to recreate the picture that we’d taken when we were 17. But at first me, Mary and Marion weren’t very keen…”
This hesitation mostly revolved around the thought of wearing clothes that at least evoked, if not directly resembled, outfits they’d last worn in the early 1970s (“I don’t wear skirts or dresses now,” says Bamforth, who recalls that in the original photo, three of the women are wearing near-identical skirts from then-UK shopping stalwart Tammy Girl).
Concern was heightened by the fact the trip was scheduled for late fall (“It was going to be October and we were going to be freezing cold in those mini skirts…” says Ansbro).
But in the end, it didn’t take much for Morris to win her friends over. She’s always been the archivist of the group, putting together photo albums and scrapbooks of their adventures over the years (“Sue is very good at doing things like that,” says Helliwell). Morris convinced her friends that the recreation would be a fun way to mark their 70th birthdays and toast their decades of friendship.
