Playing out

We lived a couple of minutes walk from the beach. There's no better playground! In summer we went swimming after school and in the holidays. Sometimes the outgoing tide left big pools which froze, enabling us to slide - or in a few cases, skate. The roads where we lived were quiet and I 'borrowed' mum's clothes rope and we played skipping games. Granny lived round the corner with a big garden which housed an old air-raid shelter and a big sycamore which was good for climbing. Strangely enough I was always a book-worm and managed to combine reading (often in the loo) and playing out.

I use to love football when there was enough of us to play - coats as goalposts, girls & boys, mixed ages. Sometimes went on till it was too dark to see & the bats were out. We used to build dens / den villages from fruit crates. Also (with adults obviously) loved haymaking, we'd have friends helping, I used to be on the trailer stacking bales from about 10 when I was old enough to lift them, not usually allowed to ride back on the top, as we didnt rope them & sometimes a section would fall off, to great merriment & joshing (mine never did) Lemon barley water from a bottle passed round everyone. Best of times.

Swings, climbing trees, hopscotch, pretend cooking with proper little utensils, hide and seek - oh such fun !

moleswife

I remember a boy next-door-but-one trying to teach me how to ride his 2-wheeler on the street but I never quite managed it!
However, I now support our local 'Playing Out' scheme (playingout.net) as a steward so children can get some of that pleasure. Parents need to supervise them, so it's not quite the same, and they don't always have the time or interest in doing so, but it is an effort to try and recapture the pleasures of the past.

Great idea.
In parts of London they also close off streets on certain days, am presuming at weekend, and children can then play out.
Traffic is one big reason why children are no longer safe, not many families owned a car when I was a child.

I've not heard of that before.
It's a great idea.

My grandson used to be quite desperate to play out when he was little, but the neighbourhood was for elderly and disabled people, so just occasional children to be seen.

I remember a boy next-door-but-one trying to teach me how to ride his 2-wheeler on the street but I never quite managed it!
However, I now support our local 'Playing Out' scheme (playingout.net) as a steward so children can get some of that pleasure. Parents need to supervise them, so it's not quite the same, and they don't always have the time or interest in doing so, but it is an effort to try and recapture the pleasures of the past.

When I was small - around 2 or 3 - I was lucky enough to play in a school playground as our home was there. I used the netball lines as roads and took out my little car and dolls pram on various occasions and tried to play netball!
When we moved near the coast I went swimming with friends and often walked up the hills on my own. My bike became a very useful piece of equipment and I gradually cycled miles and loved it. It was safer on the country roads then - no car racers!!!

All the children in my road play out. Unfortunately they use the secure car park as a playground which can be annoying but they use each other’s gardens and are out the front a lot too riding up and down the pavement.

My childhood was spent on the East Coast of Yorkshire, a group of us regularly cycled to Danes Dyke or Flamborough Head with our sandwiches for the day. No way of contacting our families then. I also remember being a Brownie then later a Red Cross cadet. Happy days.

Daisydaisydaisy

Hi there
I grew up in London and would spend hours skating round the block .
My favourite team game was Runouts ..As I got older We would do Red bus Rover and travel all over London .
I live in Essex now and haven't seen a group of Children play in the street for years !
🥲

This took me back - I remember getting a Red Rover too and just getting on one bus after another with a group of friends. Sitting on the top deck, and probably being a bit loud and annoying. The boys were always looking out of the window at the cars - a Lamborghini or a Jenson caused a great rush to one side of the bus for a look. We would jump on and off at the back - they had no doors in those days.

I lived in a coal mining village, streets at front of rows of houses, coal tips at the back, played in the streets, rope on the street lights for swings, hopscotch in the road, 2 balls against walls of houses end of rows. Slides on the coal tip, very heavy strips of canvas , lie flat and hope you would get to bottom of the tip. The Nant (stream) ran at the end of the village, frog spawn . School was in the same street were I lived, one summer
holidays we got under school gates, slid on the school roof,
someone reported us, back at school , cane twice, once for climbing on the roof and once for not owning up when asked
No playing in the streets now, school yards are now a large
memorial garden

Have visited Spain countless times over the years and noticed that children there do go out and about in groups and generally hang around basketball courts or parks/beaches, however, there do seem to be older children with them. Might not be like that everywhere but have certainly observed this.

I’ve a teenager and she played out in our estate and the gang she played with would wander over the fields. Were in a cul de sac in a town now with plenty of children playing out.

Hi there
I grew up in London and would spend hours skating round the block .
My favourite team game was Runouts ..As I got older We would do Red bus Rover and travel all over London .
I live in Essex now and haven't seen a group of Children play in the street for years !
🥲

We all did!, play out, it was normal back then, no helicopter parenting, no being driven all over the place. We, my brother and I and a girl who lived nearby walked to school from a very early age. I grew up in Surrey, close to a common, beyond my back fence was a pond and a stream which local children played around, beyond that a pub and a cricket pitch leading into woods. We played in the street, we played on the common, and in the woods around numerous ponds inhabited by fascinating pond life such as newts. Weekends we went to Saturday morning cinema which we walked into town for, returning home for the afternoon. Friday evenings I went to Brownies and came home on my own, maybe a twenty minute walk. My town was famous for what was known then as a multitude of mental hospitals, or asylums since their closure, none remain, they've been turned into housing estates. Back then quite a few inmates came out and about at the week-ends, they weren't a danger, they'd suffered traumatic events in their lives, such as shell shock, unfortunately the homes were generally known as loony bins because no one really explained what had happened to those people, as children we just knew that they weren't as they should be, but we didn't fear them, they weren't the strangers who could have presented a danger, damaged but harmless. There was far more a warning to be careful on the day people from home and abroad descended on our town for a world famous racing event, attended by The Queen and usually we got the day off school for that.

I think most children had an innate nous about not accepting sweets from strangers or going off with anyone we didn't know, we'd had our warnings, but of course there was the occasional tragedy. I remember the freedom though and know that my experiences of growing up have been very different from both children and grandchildren.

My sisters and I, born between 1945 and 1949, lived in the country. We were expected to be out, meeting up with other children on the local common.
But here is a memory from 1980 when our DS was 9. He had a classmate to tea one afternoon. Their primary school was having an athletics match against another school and I suggested that they might go and watch. 10 minutes walk which DS did on his own daily. But the other child burst into tears. It transpired that he had never been outside his front gate without an adult. I found this extraordinary, but in the subsequent children have IMHO been overprotected.
But here is

Mine and all the kids in our area where almost "feral". We live in a cul-de-sac with a Bridle path into farmland at the back of our house. All the children were similar age.
They played out in the road, in the field next to our house and generally in the area. Lots of parents to keep a eye open. We are only about 30 mins from a Beach as well, often in the summer us mums would pick them up from school, head straight to the beach, for a swim, have their tea on the beach bag of chip on way home.
If you ask them now they are all in their early 30's, all will tell you they had an amazing childhood.

I think that back in the day communities were tighter knit, we were in small Lancashire mill town and most people knew each other, our neighbours were always on hand most with children we played with, doors weren’t locked so we could easily run into a neighbours house. In our house in the summer children would be running in and out, my old mum called it Piccadilly station.
So I suppose we were safer for that reason.

Babs03 skipped, hide and seek, blind man's bluff, acky 123, the games and fun were endless. I pity kids today tbh

Oh yes those days of freedom doing all the things others have mentioned.

From the age of 8 I rode my bicycle to school, a journey of just over 3 miles. The road to school had no pavement and no lighting.

A few weeks ago I was discussing all these things and our playgrounds with my 8 year old Grandson. He couldn’t believe that we had concrete under the swings and slides and how big( and how many children we managed to get on the witches hat and the donkey. Also , how
as an 8 year old I would get the bus into town to meet friends to go to the swimming baths. No adult supervision required.
He made me laugh when he said he was glad I hadn’t been hurt or lost as he would have had a different Nana and wasn’t sure he would like that,

Cressy

Tanith I too remember playing on bomb sites and it was only as an adult that I realised what they actually were.

... another who remembers playing with friends on a bomb-site - in Maida Vale, there was one on the corner of the high street.

Did our parents know? Were they worried? I'm guessing the sites had been 'cleared' of unexploded bombs or other dangerous paraphernalia? But I do remember looking up at half-destroyed houses with remnants of wallpaper still hanging off some of the shattered walls!

I used to roam freely around the village I lived in. I used to ask the butcher for a bone for my dog - which was a piece of string I pulled around ! Bless him, he always gave me one! I moved from there was I was 8. Went back and barely recognised the place. Sadly no longer a ‘village’ but lots bigger with many housing developments.
Happy Days…

jocork

We played a hide and seek game on a nearby side street. We hid in neighbouring gardens and if the seeker went too far from their base the hiders could run and kick a can from the base to free everyone who had been found. We played that for hours.
We once had a rope swing on a tree near the nearby railway line and spent many hours there. One evening I was sent in to bed early as my mum was going out and we had a babysitter. After she'd gone I put my clothes on over my nightwear and sneaked out again to play on the swing. The babysitter caught me coming back in and agreed not to tell mum, but the next day one of the neighbours commented to my mum that I was out unusually late the night before. Mum was surprised as she knew I'd been home earlier than usual but my secret was out! I was in big trouble for that, but I think I pretended I'd got back in unnoticed to protect the babysitter.

and it was probably that community and neighbours that kept children safe in those days..

We played a hide and seek game on a nearby side street. We hid in neighbouring gardens and if the seeker went too far from their base the hiders could run and kick a can from the base to free everyone who had been found. We played that for hours.
We once had a rope swing on a tree near the nearby railway line and spent many hours there. One evening I was sent in to bed early as my mum was going out and we had a babysitter. After she'd gone I put my clothes on over my nightwear and sneaked out again to play on the swing. The babysitter caught me coming back in and agreed not to tell mum, but the next day one of the neighbours commented to my mum that I was out unusually late the night before. Mum was surprised as she knew I'd been home earlier than usual but my secret was out! I was in big trouble for that, but I think I pretended I'd got back in unnoticed to protect the babysitter.

I lived in the village of Amington near Tamworth. We built dens with gypsy friends Drusilla and Valentine, went swimming in the river Anchor I think it was called. Never came home until dusk when we were expected. I climbed trees and I am a girlie girl. Feel a bit sorry for today’s children. No freedom whatsoever.