Summer of 1976

We'd had a 4 week holiday in Miami. My grandparents had taken us all

Came back as brown as a berry only to find all my friends had fabulous tans as well!

Had a wonderful time back at home

We had an outdoor pool and spent day after day just swimming and lying around with friends

Fabulous time!

My favourite year!
Had just finished school and spent the summer in our holiday cottage on Anglesey with a group of friends.
Spent the time messing around in our mirror dinghy’s,listening to music and just having a great time.
I loved the seventies❤️

We were living in central Italy and drove back to the UK for the summer. The further north we drove the hotter it became!
Fab summer with ds playing with his cousins, involving running in and out of the spray from the hose during the day, and us sitting outside the pub opposite in the evenings after we'd put the children to bed....happy days

I was 18 and we spent the summer in Teignmouth sharing the beach with the ladybirds ??

I was much younger then and remember so much sunbathing, I was so proud of my mahogany colour tan and everyone asked where I had been on holiday. I use to say Portugal, although the best part of my tan came from lying out on the sun recliner in the back garden.

I remember it well. I was 21 at the time.
We were living in a top floor flat with our baby.
We didn't have a fridge and I remember having to stand bottles of milk in a bucket of cold water.
We didn't have a garden. Luckily we didn't get to having stand pipes here.
As I remember though, the heat didn't bother me like it does now.
Am I right in saying people somewhere were doing rain dancing?

Oh yes we got married on 19th June 1976 and that was the one day of an otherwise dry summer when it absolutely poured with rain all day! Maybe the gods were trying to tell me something!

I was 24 and working in Knightsbridge, enjoying myself!

I could sit in the sun all day then and never got too hot. Now I'm sitting inside a sweaty blob wishing it would get a bit cooler!

My boys were 1 and 2 yrs but I Remember having lots of garden parties with our local young wives group all with little children. Paddling pools and iced camp coffee. Happy days

Remember it well. We got married on July 10th in Plymouth. We were given the keys to our Naval married quarter just after the rains began. So lucky missing out on standpipes.

A wonderful summer for us: we bought the house we still live in today; after less than an hour’s labour, our son was born, two weeks after we moved in; we had the help and support of my lovely mother and niece who came from the US to stay for the whole summer.

It was bliss, even though we lived in a mess and had little money. I am sure the weather shaped our little boy’s personality as he was such a happy, sunny-natured child.

Remember the stand pipes because of the water shortage? We were told not to wash the car. We were told to bath in 5 inches of water. We were not allowed to water the garden. Our neighbour who grew his own veg used to sneak out in the middle of the night to water his veg! No we did not report him..

I remember it very well indeed.

At least I'm not pregnant this time, with a very busy little toddler to try to potty train as well.

It start mid to late June through to the end of August. We had a two week holiday booked, Sherringham, and remember being worried as just before it the weather was horrible.

Remember sitting in the garden with my 5 + 2 year olds under the washing line with a big tablecloth over it and pegged down to make a tent. In the tent was also the little round paddling pool.

I married my first husband in June 1976, and went on honeymoon by train to Butlins at Brixham in Devon. The tiny chalet was nothing more than a Garden she’d, with an outhouse Toilet and washbasin at the back, it became unbearably hot inside, and we spent many nights asleep in a deckchair outside. The railway points melted on the way down, the train was standing room only, and a 7 hour journey from Derby quickly turned into a nightmare 12 hours due to hold ups and diversions. We arrived too late for Dinner, and the Bar would not allow us to bring back any soft drinks to our room to help cool us down. We returned home two weeks later more exhausted than we were when we arrived, but at least our little terraced house remained fairly cool, and we finally slept better at last!

I was living in Germany and when I went for my last ante-natal visit in the second week of May the blossom covered trees were dusted with snow. Just over a week later my second daughter was born in blistering heat and spent her early days wearing just a nappy. As we entered August I came to realise that my baby was ill and the rest of the year was a blur as I struggled to manage a very poorly baby, a three year old and long distances to the nearest hospital - all whilst my husband was working away.

That poorly baby overcame her health difficulties, but at the age of two, whilst being very poorly during one of her stints in hospital, she told me that she would be a nurse. She is now a Clinical Nurse Manager and a very empathetic, caring and kindly human being.

My children aged 3, 5 and 7 almost lived in the garden in 1976.

I was constantly refilling the paddling pool and providing home made ice lollies to them and it seemed half the children in the neighbourhood who loved our garden (mostly as I provided snacks)

So well remember that year. Up until 1st August we lived in a new build house (four years old). Was so hot and stifling all the time. Even with every door and window wide open, just could not get any relief from the heat. Had three small children aged 6, 5 and 3 plus twins of a year old.

When we moved house, to an brick built Edwardian property, it was bliss. The back of the house did not get daytime sun, and was always lovely and cool.

Could not have paddling pool outside (due to water shortage laws), but the children ran around virtually naked most of the time, getting lovely, healthy tans. My parents would come over quite a lot and we would sit in the shady part of the garden. It was a majical year for me.

Sadly, much of the forest (we lived very close to Epping Forest) caught fire. Remember trying to return home from a visit to a friend, and not being permitted down the road leading to my house. At the time we were told it could take a couple of decades for the forest to recover, but by the following year, new shoots had appeared in all the blackened out areas and within a very short time, nobody could see where these fires had been. Nature has a wonderful recovery rate.

A government member was appointed as Minister for Drought and within less of 48 hours of that appointment, the first clouds for weeks appeared in the skys, turned grey and a deluge came down, and within days he was re-named as Minister of Floods.!!

Think the difference was, that the cloudless blue sky during those weeks was throughout the UK, whereas this year it has been like that in the South, but not all over.

I remember it ended with a spectacular thunder storm at the end of August.

I was eighteen and just started my nurse training. It was a very old hospital with what looked like army barracks for wards with doors that opened onto gardens some of the patients were taken to sit outside. I was living in the nurses home working nights and couldn’t sleep during the day it was so hot.

I remember it well. I was living in Richmond, Surrey and was hopelessly, helplessly in love with someone in the crowd I used to mix with. The wonderful thing about that summer was being able to plan a day out somewhere days in advance and know the weather would be hot and sunny.

As for the helpless/hopeless love? It remained unrequited for several years but in the end came to nothing. Despite my stalled love life I will always think back on those days of sunshine as some of my very happiest.

Touring round Brittany on the back of a motorcycle....grand days.

Wonderful holiday in Dorset in a rented house with friends - so four adults, two eleven year old girls, two nine year old boys and a three year old. It was hot enough to swim in the sea at Charmouth, to dam the local stream, to cook supper over a camp fire and to send up clouds of blue butterflies when walking through fields. A great holiday, and remembered by all the children who as adults have replicated it for their own families.

When we did it again 1978 it started to rain on the first Sunday and never stopped for the whole two weeks. Lesson learned - don’t try to recreate perfection!

In June of that year DD1 was 8 months old. We went will Mil and Fil to Devon for a holiday . It was so hot that when pegging our a line full of baby clothes on a long “traditional” line by the time I got to the one end the items at the beginning of the line were already dry.

I also remember disposable nappies at the time were not very reliable. FIL got a damp lap several times whilst holding baby but it seemed only when he wore a particular green shirt, if he wore another colour he got away with it!?

In 1976, I was a newly qualified teacher and as soon as I arrived in the morning I used to open all the windows in my classroom and close all the curtains to keep the room cool - other staff thought I was mad, but it worked.
It was so hot we had to 'water' our classes every hour or so to keep them hydrated - water bottles in schools were unheard of then.
At playtimes and lunchtimes we were allowed to take the children on to the field to play, as the tarmac playground was baking hot and the tar was sticky on the hottest days. We had Sports Day in the morning that year as it was much cooler and there was still some shade on the field.
The local pub let us borrow some outdoor tables and big umbrellas, so the children could sit in the shade. By the end of term I was teaching most of my lessons outside and we had story time at the end of each day under a huge, oak tree which had the best shade.
And it stayed hot and sunny once the schools broke up, too!