Seaside holidays

Better than my brothers strange knitted one though! Very saggy when wet. ?

I remember them too Jane10, I think every little girl had one!

Every day was/is a seaside holiday for me. I still live in the coastal town where I grew up.
As a child my best friend and neighbour and I would spend most of our summer days on the pebble beach, taking a packed lunch and swimming in the sea.
We never went away on holiday until I was 11. The family would have days out by train to Margate and Ramsgate where my brother would dig huge holes in the sand and mum would sit all day in the deck chair whilst dad and I swam. We'd have 99 cornets and bring home rock.
Aaahhh happy days.

I remember those swimsuits. Goodness knows why they were made of that odd fabric!

We didn't have many seaside holidays but I remember a week at Sheringham in 1957 when I was seven. It was the first week of September and autumn had started early; every day but one was overcast and often rainy and there seemed to be a perpetual NE wind blowing.

Every day, my sister and I would be taken to the beach where we'd huddle miserably, making sand castles and wearing woolly cardigans over our swimming costumes. (Remember those odd cozzies made of a sort of ruched material which filled with water when you got them wet?). Our parents would watch us from deck chairs while wearing their coats and, for lunch, our hotel supplied a daily picnic of scrawny white bread sandwiches and an apple. Try as we might, we always seemed to end up with sand in the sandwiches.

We had no money and no car so we were trapped in Sheringham, whose delights we exhausted fairly quickly. I couldn't wait to go home and back to school! After that great success, I don't recall that there ever was another family seaside holiday, only days out by the sea from time to time.

We didn’t have many seaside holidays as a child but I can’t remember liking the seaside very much when we did go. In large northern towns, holidays were taken in “works weeks” and everyone converged en masse on places like Bridlington, Cleethorpes, Scarborough, Blackpool and Morecambe. And then much later, I discovered the West Country and West Wales and fell in love with the seaside all over again. I think the problem was I read too many Famous Five books as a child! These days we love the smaller east coast resorts like Filey, Robin Hood’s Bay and Whitby, but they didn’t figure on the agenda during my childhood!

I loved the winter gardens in Great Yarmouth when I was a kid Mick my dad would let me have a lemon and lime and I felt so sophisticated.

Only trouble was I was always terribly travel sick. My parents didn't drive and the coach from Tyneside took for ever.

Seaside holidays or breaks , the coach trips I go on are mainly to seaside resorts for either a few days or longer.
Areas which I like have been places like Eastbourne, Bournemouth , IOW.
And as a kid it was Great Yarmouth or along that coastline close by.
Apart from Ice Creams its Fish & Chips , but not the commercial ones, but also like prawns used to see stallholders selling them , I walked from Shanklin to Sandown on the promenade got some prawns in a dish, consumed got to Sandown and got another one.
Mick

I absolutely love the sea, and the seaside. I couldn’t imagine a holiday inland. My one regret in life is that we have not lived by the sea. I would have loved my children being able to swim, sail and paddle after school. Having said all this - we have owned a holiday home on a beach all our lives (don’t think we’re rich as we inherited it) but it just wasn’t possible to live there because of work/family etc. We actually live amongst a forest, which to some people would be bliss, but I just hanker after the sea all the time.

I don’t know what it is Kitty, but I could watch it for hours, it’s good for the soul

Jane10 I've read that and also loved it. Amazing how good a book can be when nothing really happens!

I think it's the quality of the light at the seaside that makes it so fabulous.

Tourists are a pain in towns too, gilly. We lived and worked in the town walls in Shrewsbury and sometimes it was difficult to manoeuvre 2 children, a dog and a pushchair out of the front door through the (mostly American) tourists.

I grew up by the sea and my mum took us to the beach on many summer afternoons. We didn't have many holidays but sometimes we used to go on a day trip to a sandy beach which was a novelty to us, building sandcastles and the like. I loved those paper flags you could get to stick in the top!

My mum swore blind that a brisk walk on the sea front a winter's day also cured all ills and I remember being taken to see the sea ice in the winter of '63.

I find the sea mesmerising, I can stand for ages just watching it. I live inland now but have plenty of rivers around.

There's a wonderful book by RC Sheriff called 'A Fortnight in September'. It's an old one written in the 30s I think but it's such a lovely read about a family holiday to the seaside. It's not a thriller but absolutely captivating.

Gillybob

I think it’s all to do with nostalgia, it’s like you remembering your grandad. Remembering Sunday school outings reminds me of my lovely cousin, now dead, in our matching swimsuits from the co-op, it is sad in a way, but happy memories

A good sniff of the sea air sets you up for the day.

There is something sentimental about standing looking at the sea. I've felt it myself at times. Lost childhood maybe.

Lovebeigecardigans

Love Exmouth! Take our grandchildren quite often, I doubt it’s changed very much, swans in the boating lake, swing boats, perfect day out!

I think you are right lovebeige . When I walk on the beach alone I especially remember my grandad who loved the beach (the same beach I walk along) and all the other people I have loved and those I have lost. It does remind me of the passage of time as though we are almost powerless in the grand scheme of things.

We didn't holiday every year as we were quite hard up but I remember building sandcastles and eating lovely ice cream cornets - Mr Whippy was the favourite.
Oh Luckygirl for around eight years my late hubby and I lived in Exmouth. There's something about living in a seaside town which is very special.
But gillybob I understand about the sea being sad. I can't put my finger on it but watching the tide rolling in and out has a melancholy quality to it. I can't fathom why. Does it remind us of the passage of time - "Time and tide wait for no man" and we mortals are powerless against it? I will always have a soft spot for Exmouth.

I love being by the sea. In Malaga we are.
Not here in Urmston.
I think there is something very calming about watching the waves roll in ... (cue ‘sitting on the dock of the bay’!) and being able to walk along the sand or the promenade.

Years ago my sister and I used to be in Blackpool for the summer holidays as our mum was born there and had family there. We used to get so excited.

Fish and chips. Candy floss. Punch & Judy shows on the beach. Donkey rides where the sand would rub between our little legs and the donkey, jogging along with bells on the bridle. The smell of the salty air and the sound of seagulls. Clumps of seaweed which gave us the willies for some reason! Sand dunes to hide in and roll down. Egg butties which always tasted gritty. Metal buckets and metal spades with a long wooden handle.

Oh and that ‘laughing’ clown (?) in a glass case near the Tower (I think) that spooked us. And the green and cream trams. Knickerbocker glories in a beach cafe as a treat.

This was the late 1950’s and very early 60’s. Magical.
?

We used to have holidays in a B and B, sharing a toilet with goodness knows how many families!

Best seaside memories are Sunday school outings, my cousin Carol, and being in the sea all day, and going to the fair in the evening

Oh, Happy Days

Probably Sara65

Gillybob

Maybe you’d be even more miserable if you lived somewhere else!

Just a thought!

I don't think I could live inland now Lucky there is something about the sea that draws you and it would be very hard to leave. Of course there are drawbacks like the hoards of visitors in the summer who clog the roads up around me, rather than pay to use a carpark, the fog horn keeping you awake some nights and the fog itself, the rats with wings (seagulls) swooping down and pinching ice creams, having to pretend that the fairground is closed today when the DGC can hear the music from my back garden (its hard to get away with that one now they're older).

I often walk on the beach when I am in need of a good cry, it clears mind a bit.

My happiest memories of the seaside were visiting Great Yarmouth as a child. Seeing whoever was doing the summer season, the fairground and the winter gardens.

I tell you what gilly, perhaps we should swap homes!!