Text 1: Forty-nine pensioners and a coach to Skegness, by Paul Rishworth

An original contemporary blog.

Once a year our community centre hires a coach and takes whoever wants to go to the seaside. This year forty-nine people signed up, the oldest ninety-three, and I was one of four volunteers in charge of keeping count.

We left the car park at half past seven, with flasks, travel sweets and a list of who needed the front seats because of their knees. By the time we reached the motorway the back row had started singing, and they did not really stop for two hours.

At Skegness the coach dropped us on the seafront and everyone scattered. Some went straight to the amusements, a few brave ones paddled, and a group of ladies sat in a shelter with a pot of tea and watched the sea for most of the afternoon, which they said was the whole point. At one o’clock we all met for fish and chips at a café that had pushed six tables together for us.

The journey home was quieter. Half the coach fell asleep before Lincoln. We got back at seven, two people short of a full set of hats but otherwise complete. As she got off, Mrs Abbott, who lives alone, told me it was the first time she had been further than the end of her road since Christmas.

Text 2: The foundry outing, by A Correspondent

An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

This report of a works outing, a day trip paid for by an employer for the people who worked in his factory, appeared in a local newspaper in 1873.

On Saturday the workpeople of Messrs Lambkin and Sons’ iron foundry, with their wives and children, three hundred and forty in all, enjoyed their annual holiday at Wexcombe Park, by the kind permission of the Earl.

The party assembled in the foundry yard at seven o’clock, where eighteen horse brakes, each decorated with flags and evergreens, stood ready, and set off through the town behind the works brass band, to the great entertainment of the inhabitants, who lined the streets to watch them go. The road being long and the hills steep, the journey of fourteen miles occupied above three hours.

In the park the men played a cricket match, the foundry against the pattern shop, which the pattern shop won with ease; the young people danced upon the lawn; and the children ran races for prizes of sixpences and toffee. At two o’clock an excellent dinner of roast beef and plum pudding was served to all in a great marquee, after which Mr Lambkin spoke of the good feeling between master and men, and was loudly cheered.

A heavy shower at five drove everybody under the trees, but did nothing to spoil the day. The brakes returned at about ten, the passengers singing the whole way home.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly what happened on the day trips.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.