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Can remember looking forward to the two weeks in a caravan in Skeggy with the Grandparents. The caravans had gas lights in the early days (my kids are convinced I'm Victorian).
I remember having to trawl across the site with my rolled up towel with soap and stuff to have a shower in the shower block. Dropping the soap on the way back and trying to pick the grass off before someone else had to use it.
Going to the loo and having to take the soft stuff with you because there was only Izal provided.
Great times, great times.
Butlins at Minehead
Then after that it was four years on the trot to the Isle of Wight, (lots of coloured filled lighthouses to proove it!),
Then when I was 5 we were lucky enough to start going abroard and went to Italy.
When my kids were small we did:-
Hopton in a Chalet, all squashed in with my brother, sister-in-law and their 2 kids.
Then it was Brixham in Devon, had a great time in the Caravan, kids loved it.
after that it was Barry Island..... The weather was so bad, we said we would go abraod after that, so the following year we went to Rhodes, saved every penny we could!!
You still can't beat a caravan holiday etc., with kids though!!
Butlins at Minehead back in 1974.
We could go on any of the rides as many times as we wanted without having to pay which was totally cool! All the one-armed bandits cost 1p a go.
Those huge dining halls where everyone would cheer when the staff dropped the crockery.
I remember being p'd off because I wasn't tall enough to go on the cable cars. They had a line marked on a board that showed the minimum permitted height before you were allowed on some of the rides.
Fondest memory of the place was badgering my mum for money to play "This Town Aint Big Enough" by Sparks on every jukebox I came across. I still have the vinyl single my mum bought me back then.
The first holiday I can recall was Whitby in Summer 1979. I stayed in a rented terrace house for a week and the only thing I can remember was watching Sapphire and Steel and being scared stiff - there was also a power cut that night, and posing for a photo with my two cousins - which I still have.
We didn't go away every year but I do remember Skeggy,Chapel St Leonards (Maid Marian Caravan Park),Great Yarmouth (Silver Sands I think) Tenby...all made better by all the comics bringing out Summer specials to read.
My job at the Caravan Parks was to take the plastic container to the standpipe and fill it with water for use in the Caravan!
I remember at school, some well heeled kid had been to Spain.They had to stand in front of everyone at Assembly and tell everyone all about these exotic lands and their adventures!!
Oggie.
My first holiday was Pontins at Bracklesham Bay in 1978. It would have been Butlins in Minehead the year before had i not contracted chicken pox a few days prior.
Oggie, i know what you mean about the kid going to Spain. We had a geography teacher who every year ran a school trip to Switzerland for those kids whose parents were not counting the pennies. The thing is that for the 6 weeks or so before they left on their trip of a lifetime, our geography lessons were just an itinery of their holiday badly disguised as a lesson. It was a nightmare for those of us who knew that holiday time was a beach hut with flaky paint.
We never went abroad, always stayed in seaside resorts like Weymouth or Blackpool. We used to take those packs of little cereal boxes of frosties and ricecrispies. My brother and me would fight over who would have which cereal. My holiday present would be one of those little windmills and a bucket and spade, then we'd go looking for beasties in rockpools. We always sat behind one of those striped canvas windbreaks on the beach where mum would sit doing her knitting!!
Camber Sands for me too..15 years running.
we never went to Pontins, too much like a stalag with its loudspeakers and regime. Although we used to sneak in there over the fence.We used to stay at Maddiesons camp further up the road or Silver Sands.
Still a fantastic place for a day at the beach,but a bit of a Chav haven.
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