Remember the heatwave of 1976?

One of them is camping at Rock, across from Padstow and swimming in clean green warm water. Another is camping near Bodmin and waking up to a cow pushing her head through the front. We packed up in a hurry!

I worked in the Central Forecast Office at the Met Office in Bracknell in 1976. It was a fascinating time to be there with records being broken all around the country on a daily basis.

Dressing up in Victorian maids/ shop assistant clothing. Long Black skirts and long sleeved white blouses with mob caps on our heads during the Carlisle Great Fair. Fortunately I worked in a nice cool grocery shop. Going about in the city in that skirt was hot.

My older daughter was born in 1976 and I was off work with her. The bedrooms got so hot that she slept in her pram in a shady place in the garden until we went to bed. I spent a lot of time sunbathing, read a lot of books and was generally extremely lazy.

I noted in my diary 5th June it was 'boiling in afternoon' and I went for an hour's walk! The next day it was 'boiling' and I sunbathed all day. 25th June I wrote that it was the hottest day since records began and I went to a barbeque barn dance in the evening. The following day (also hot) I went on a leukaemia charity walk so I obviously wasn't phased by the heat.

I watched the programme too. My eldest daughter was also born in 1976 - in the middle of the heatwave. I remember trying to keep myself cool when I was hugely pregnant with wet towels and flannels and also walking the dog on the nearby hills at midnight when it was cooler. Lots of other people with the same idea too.

Pregnant with first child , I remember it well ??!

I can remember lots of swimming both in local rivers and the sea.

DH did the North/South Dartmoor walk- with the youth club members that we ran. Gruelling.

I remained at home with the children.

We got married on the 3 rd July 1976.
Bridal fashion then was long sleeves and high necks. Luckily my dress was fairly light fabric.
I can remember everyone using the order of service as fans.
We saved a fortune on drinks as every wanted long cold squash.

Looking through my diary, it doesn't seem as though I was much affected by the heat even though I was in the centre of the country where it is always hottest. We went down to London a few times to visit parents in law, I took driving lessons, I gave blood for the first time. And yet the programme shows how devastating it was for water supplies and crops because it lasted for so long.

Oh yes, wonderful memories of gathering on the school's playing fields and listening to 10 CC's 'I'm not in love', before rushing into class when the lunchtime was over.

That heatwave went for a while I seem to remember.

I was on a short contract with the local water authority. My start day was April 1st!

I had to measure water levels in a certain area and worked outside most of the time. Sun hat, crop top, jeans and trainers or wellie boots depending on the terrain. Come winter, I was trussed up in the smallest size man's wet gear. It didn't fit well!

I was 9 months pregnant it was horrendous I stood in the shower for hours, I was so glad when my waters broke he was born on the 13th July.

Ooo yes. Sitting GCSEs and the German teacher brought in chovolate ice creams which dripped all over the exam papers!
In love with the dishiest 6th former, and listening to Dr Hook's A little bit more.

Going to the beach after work and my then boyfriend ( now hubby) went to Italy with my parents to visit family.

I remember camping at Weymouth. The campsite grass all died in the heat and the earth cracked. My little brother lost a toy down one of the deep cracks. All the dads on the campsite spent a blistering afternoon trying to retrieve it - shirts off, smoking and inventing devices from coat hangers. All unsuccessful.

My other vivid memory is of the heatwave ending with thunder and lightening and raindrops the size of old pennies.

Swathes of dead ladybirds washed up on the tideline on the Somerset coast. Instead of the usual green of the seaweed the tideline - about 8 feet wide - was bright red. Utterly macabre.

Oh yes - and giving birth in the August after weeks of lumbering about like a lump of hot sweaty lard.

I worked in a Butlins in North Wales and I remember it as if it were yesterday……

Wow, three grans here who gave birth in 1976! Well done ladies, it must have been hard carrying full term in that heat.

Sorry now four grans! ?

I remember my boys being 6 and 3 at the time and being as brown as berries, living in shorts all day and/or having fun in the paddling pool for hours.

All the grass was like straw and we had loads of tomatoes.

We had a caravan holiday in Dawlish with friends, the kids in the sea all the time and rowing an inflatable boat [safe spot] ...a lot happened that holiday and ended up with my life changing in quite a big way.

My boys were four and two. My Australian husband was amazed by the weather - just like home! I remember him saying that it must be going to be the wettest autumn ever - and it was.

Great article and I love the picture of the women in the street with their buckets.
Heatwave article and pictures

I remember the summer of 1976 so well, but perhaps for more reasons than the heatwave.

I had twins diagnosed at a routine scan at 20 weeks on July 16th 1976. Routine scans were pretty unusual back then but this was a London Teaching Hospital.

I do remember the heat that summer, and the drought. I think we were advised to share a bath and not flush the toilet, to save water. There would not have been room for me and DH in a shared bath, with two babies on board.

I believe there were standpipes in the street too.

Identical girls were born prematurely in November 1976 so we
survived the heat of the summer. But I was 28 then!