Going to the seaside around 1950-1955

Changing on the beach out of my knitted swimsuit (!), then walking from the beach through the park where there were red squirrels then going to Bobby's Department Store for a Knickerbcker Glory and watching mannequins walk amongst the tables to model the clothes for sale in the store.

Oh, yes! The occasional knickerbocker glory but also chocolate nut sundae and banana splits! I never knew which to choose. All soooo yummy!

Freezing cold sea and glorious North Yorkshire beaches.

Egg sandwiches and hot tomato soup to warm us up.

How wonderful. I never had a holiday as a child. Never saw the sea.

Kate1949. My poor dear mum (Bless her) would save up to take my sister and I to the sea for one week a year.

How lovely of her giulia. I've seen the sea many times as an adult!

We had a Sunday School outing one day of the year to the seaside, and that was it.

A ride on a donkey was the highlight.

We lived quite near the sea so often went to the beach for the day on Sundays in the summer. My Dad was always convinced it was windy so the first task was to put up the windbreak. We would have a picnic lunch, usually chicken cooked the night before with salad. The afternoon treat was a tray of tea from the beach cafe for the adults and ice creams for the children.

For various reasons, seaside holdays were fairly rare between 1950 and 1955.

However we did spend a week a in Girvan, on the west coast of Scotland one yeat. My main memory is of pouring rain and as far as I can rememeber we never made it on to the beach once during the week. We did however go to Ailsa Craig in a boat, sought shelter and stayed there until the boat back, and we went to the circus, which I didn't much enjoy and still do not enjoy.

We had a car and went to the seaside every year for a week. Some years we had days out instead of a full week. We lived in London so normally Kent or Sussex, no woolly swimsuit though mine was nylon bubble effect, didn't itch and dried very quickly. My dad taught me to swim in the sea.

We didn't have a car so holidays were by coach or, more exciting, by train.
By train to London then we had to cross London by taxi and I remember the taxi driver stopping so that we could watch the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
Then we caught another train to Cornwall and we went into the corridor for a first glimpse of the sea at Dawlish.

There is a marvellous novel by R C Sherriff called A Fortnight in September about an English family’s holiday in Bognor in the 1930s. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I seen to recall that we had to leave the boarding house after breakfast and return for evening meal, whatever the weather. We couldn't afford lots of cafes, so we sheltered out of the rain on the front, in our pacamacs. I loved burying my Dad on the sand. We decorated
Sand castles with shells and little paper flags. I loved the sea, they'd make me come out blue with cold. The sandwich had sand in them! Happy days.

I don’t remember having one much before I was 10, 1960. I didn’t feel left out as I didn’t know anything different. We had a garden or I took my little brother to the local park 10 minutes walk away.

We had no car so the ccasional day out to the seaside by bus and train. Mum and dad hired deck chairs while we kids played in the sand, made castles, and decorated them with shells and pebbles. When dad was in a good mood he would lie flat and allow us to bury him in sand. That didnt happen often.

When we were older we went for a week in a chalet or caravan in N Wales. As a real treat we would have one fish and ships meal in a beach front cafe. We kids always wanted to make chip butties but were never allowed to as my mother thought it was "common". We spent out time walking along the sea wall and playing on the pinball machines in the amusement arcades.

My father was keen on taking cine films – if anyone can remember what they were. I still have one – black and white – taken when I was about two in the early 1950s. I had been playing in the sea and returned to my parents on the beach. My mother removed my swimsuit and dried my body. At which point I ran back into the sea stark naked, filmed, with much amusement by my Dad.

Very exciting, being with my parents all the time instead of them always working. With my extended family, not much money but wonderful days. We had some quite run down accommodation , which mom scrubbed out, some better ones but it didn’t bother us as children, just the sand and the sea was enough.

Callistemon21

Changing on the beach out of my knitted swimsuit (!), then walking from the beach through the park where there were red squirrels then going to Bobby's Department Store for a Knickerbcker Glory and watching mannequins walk amongst the tables to model the clothes for sale in the store.

Was that Bournemouth Callistemon?

I was born in 1953, my earliest memories are of sleeping in what we called the Hut at Mudeford with my sisters at the other end of the bed, foot to feet. I must have been about 3.
We had a bungalow at New Milton too so used to spend all of Easter, half term and summer holidays there when we were at primary school.
I remember sand in the sandwiches, going in the sea however cold or rough it was and going to Christchurch to feed the swans and have a pony ride.
Such innocent, carefree times.

We went by train when I was small - so exciting to watch for the first glimpse of the sea. And the sea-smell! Probably largely seaweed but I still love it, ditto the cry of the gulls.

We always had a beach hut for all the paraphernalia of 4 kids, plus a retreat for when it rained. Always a rented house, never a hotel or B&B, usually with one or other grandmother and sometimes an aunt, too.

We were always at a ‘quiet’ end of the beach, not near the pier, which of course I loved - noisy and gaudy and trashy! Luckily one GM shared my feelings and would take me now and then. Looking back, I dare say money was the reason my folks shunned it - especially with 4 children who’d all want rides - spare cash was never a given until I was considerably older.

I still remember one funny old house we stayed at - it was called Winker’s Cot, only to be re-christened immediately by my father as Widdler’s Pot!

Two weeks on the Clyde coast at Glasgow Fair Fortnight. Nylon bobble swimsuit My widowed Aunt always came with us. My Mum and Dad rented rooms in a family home - pretty normal in those days.
First glimpse of the sparkling sea always a highlight ! Wonderful to have my hard working Dad free for the only two weeks in the year he had away from a factory floor.
The destinations varied. Prestwick Ayr , Saltcoats were three of the favourites.
I remember being very impressed that we could get a direct train from our local station to wherever we wanted to go ! I realise now ,of course , that British Rail ( was it called that in the 50s ? ) Put on special trains for the hordes.
Happy carefree days.

Off at a tangent here, but there was an old lady in my mother’s care home who happily told me just about every time I went that her mum and dad and grandma and granddad were coming soon, and they were all going to the seaside together.

Unlike many of them (it was a dementia-only care home) she always seemed so happy in her sunlit childhood idyll.

I so often wished that my poor mother could be happy in a sunlit childhood idyll of her own. ?

Floriel - it is indeed a brilliant book!

I had two grannies: one was London Granny and the other Seaside Granny.

The latter lived in a small fishing village in Devon called Lympstone. When my brother and I were quite small we used to be allowed to walk down to the village together to the little station and take the train to Exmouth where we would spend the day. We would swim, play on the beach, enjoy the boating pool and the wonderful play park where you could hire a little car or bike and drive round the "roads" which had traffic signs and zebra crossings. And we would go on the mini-train ride. We loved it!!!

Lympstone was a very special place to us where we had lots of freedom - we would walk down to the village shop and choose sweets, then wind our way through the fishermen's cottages to the harbour and sit and them.

We would walk home for massive meals cooked by my tiny granny - she weighed in at about 5.5 stone but her meals were for giants. I remember piles of roast potatoes glistening with fat in her posh Royal Doulton serving dishes, delicious stodgy puddings with custard - brilliant!

And I remember the grandmother clock that now stands in my hallway, and how it used to chime its way through the night and wake me up.

I also remember being terrified of the kitchen, because it was there that my grandfather committed suicide in the gas oven - I would dash my way through because I thought his ghost was there.

...sit and eat them ....