By Helen Bishop
In the 1970s and 80s and even in the 90s lesbians found it difficult, especially as a couple, to find holiday accommodation that was friendly, and safe. Hotels were probably fine if you could afford them but going to a B&B (Bed and Breakfast) was a lottery. If you said on the phone when you booked that you were two women, you would usually turn up and find twin beds. Or if you didn’t tell them, the minute they realised you were two women ‘Oh we could change it to single beds very quickly’. Then you would have to insist on keeping the double bed. Which was sometimes embarrassing, and you had to brazen it out. We used to have a bet to see how many seconds it would take after we arrived, before the offer of twin beds! And sometimes you would be turned away, despite having booked. ‘We don’t have your kind here’. Or ‘It’s fully booked’.
I had lived in France, and I knew the French magazine Lesbia had ads for women’s holiday places, so in the summer of 1990 I visited some of the ones in France. Wonderful places. The first one I went to was in the Drome, where Dominique (American) and Laura (French) had themselves built their lovely wooden house, Inanna, halfway up a mountain. They offered camping for women in the little field by their house and provided an evening meal for everyone together at a long table outside with a view of the mountains. I also went to a place in the Cevennes (I forget the name). It was autumn and I watched the sheep being driven down from their summer pasture ready for the winter. I also stayed at two places in South West France, one of which, ‘Saouis’ run by Dagmar, had made their own natural swimming pool. I remember fields of sunflowers. All these places were run by women for women, they were very welcoming, everyone ate together and talked about the state of feminism in different countries. It was a great way to have a holiday and meet other feminists, and for some women a way to find a partner! Finding these places was either by word of mouth or from listings in women’s liberation or lesbian magazines or bookshops or cafes. The internet hadn’t taken off then, I had email at work by mid 90s, but few people had it at home. Contact was by post or by phone, few people had personal mobiles, only landlines, and messages could only be left if you had an ansaphone machine (remember those?!) plugged into your phone at home.
When I came back and was talking about this holiday to friends, someone introduced me to Sandy Horn, an American living in London. She had started Gaia’s Guide in the States in 1975 and continued to publish it when she moved to the UK. In 1991 Gaia’s was still mainly US and Canadian listings. Sandy was very keen to add European places, especially to get ahead of her US competitor, the Ferrari Guide called Places for Women, which didn’t yet have European listings. I started helping Sandy with the next edition of Gaia’s Guide which came out in 1992. We searched the listings in European feminist magazines, contacted everyone we knew in other countries, and gradually found more and more places. Sandy always put in the book, ‘If you go to one of these places, Say Hi from Gaia!’
In 1991 there wasn’t any women-only accommodation in London, so my partner Kate and I decided to open our home as a women’s B&B. Our aim was to offer something cheaper than hotels or standard B&Bs, an affordable place for feminists and lesbians to stay in London. And for us to meet women from other countries. We put an ad for ‘Kate and Helen’s B&B’ in the French magazine Lesbia, and began to get a regular flow of visitors, both lesbians and heterosexual feminists, initially from France. Some came with children, and one said you know you are the only women’s B&B in UK that accepts children. It was great meeting women from different countries and telling them where to go in London to meet feminists. We had several London itineraries to suggest, depending on what kind of thing they wanted to do. Of course we included all the lesbian discos, the women’s bookshop (Sisterwrite) and Compendium bookshop by Camden Lock, the gay bookshop (Gay’s the Word) and the places where women’s theatre and music happened. Kate and I were both working so we didn’t do an evening meal, and we left everything for breakfast on the table and gave them a key. We only knew of one other women’s B&B in London (Helen Berenger in Hampstead). Later, Reeves Hotel for women started in Shepherds Bush. There were a few women’s B&Bs in other parts of the UK, and the Women’s Holiday Centre in Horton in Yorkshire, which wasn’t a B&B, but a house which could be booked for self-catering women’s groups. There was also something like that in Wales. (someone should write about these)
Helen and Kate’s b&b – advertised in ‘Women Going Places’
We ran our B&B for 6 years, and in that time, word travelled, and women came from a wider range of countries, including a steady stream of Japanese lesbians from Osaka, after one had seen the ad in the French magazine Lesbia. Sandy put our B&B in the Gaia’s Guide listings (see photo), so then we got women from USA and Canada too.
Our b&b was advertised here
I helped Sandy to finish the 1992 Gaia’s Guide, and then Sandy became ill with cancer, and a woman called Zoe took it over, and renamed the guide Women Going Places. (I can’t remember Zoe’s surname, and for some reason, she only put her first name in the book). Zoe was living near Lancaster Gate, in a large and luxurious flat with an elderly woman who was beginning to suffer from dementia. Zoe had been employed by the woman’s relatives to be a live-in ‘companion’, to keep an eye on her. I used to go over there in the evening to help Zoe with the book, and I remember working on the listings, sitting on deep sofas and drinking tea from beautiful Spode bone china teacups, while the elderly lady slept.
In 1994 my partner and I decided to have a child. We went to BPAS (British Pregnancy Advisory Service) which accepted lesbians for donor insemination (DI). Previously lesbians had used the turkey baster method with donated sperm (someone should write about that!), but after the AIDS crisis most lesbians wanted to be sure the sperm had been tested and was safe.
‘Our b&b was advertised here
Our daughter was born in 1995. We had a break from the B&B while Kate was pregnant and while our daughter was a baby. Then we started taking bookings again. However, it was hard work with a toddler, and we began to refuse bookings that were only for one night, because changing the beds and cleaning up each time was too much. Then my mother became ill, and one day we came back from visiting her to find a note on our door, and messages on the ansaphone. We had forgotten a booking. We felt awful. It was the only time we forgot, but we knew then that it was time to close the B&B. We had run it for 6 years, from 1991 to 1997 and met a lot of lovely women.
All illustrations provided by the National Lesbian Archive at the Glasgow Women’s Library.
See the HOWL Resource and Book lists for contact information for the National Lesbian Archive and the Glasgow Women’s Library.