Remember the heatwave of 1976?

Sparklefizz

Well done to all those who were pregnant in 1976. I had an 18 month old toddler and we were planning a 2nd baby but I knew I couldn't cope with pregnancy in similar heat plus a toddler in tow.

Our planning worked as I became pregnant and gave birth to our son in May 1977. Of course it rained!

We didn't know it was going to be that hot!!

Anyway, our planning hadn't worked ?

I did A levels that summer and remember taking a water bottle into the exams, before that was fashionable. It was hard revising in the heat and I think I was quite grumpy with my family!!

I was pregnant with our first child in that summer of 76. She was born earl February 1977. We went on a holiday to the West Country and, instead of its being all green and lush, it was a desert of scorched grass. I remember thinking when the rain did eventually come, just after the government appointed a Minister for drought, that I would never complain about rain again.

Wasn’t it water shortages and sharing showers back then?

My friend and I were newly qualified staff nurses on night duty during 1976. We worked 8 x 11 hour shifts and slept outside in the day under the shade of trees in the nurses’ home garden. On our first night off we took the midnight train to Devon to spend 5 days with the two fellas we’d met on holiday the previous year. What a fabulous summer!

I don't recall it being that hot to be honest. I remember the bad winter of 1966 much more.

Best home grown strawberries that year.

My daughter was 3 in 1976. We spent the summer on sidmouth beach and she learnt to swim. Like a fish. I worked in the evenings as a waitress and my mum looked after her for me. Happy days ?

I remember that there was a lido at Whipps Cross, set amongst the edges of Epping Forest, where there was a forest fire. The entire area was scorched black and brown.

During that summer I found every excuse to skip work lolol and enjoy the wonderful weather.

It was glorious. I lived in Fulham, fell in love again with my childhood sweetheart and married in the September. Nine months later our first daughter was born.

The summer of '76 was indeed memorable.

I can remember the heatwave breaking. I'd been to a club and it was midnight, rain started to fall and we all took our shoes off and danced about in the centre of Bath!

I was pregnant throughout the '76 heatwave. My baby bump did a fantastic job of regulating my temperature and I never felt uncomfortable in the heat even though everyone around me was sweating and suffering. She's 46 now and can't stand hot weather but I'll always be grateful for her pre-birth temperature regulating skills!

My mum and I worked for same company in Princes Risborough
We started at 5.00a.m and finished at 1p.m
Wonderful memories such great year just started dating my now husband

I was 8 mths pregnant in the summer of 76 . I spent most of my time in the shower or sat in the shade with my 15 mths old in her paddling pool but luckily we didn't have to put up with the constant doom and gloom merchants as we do today

Nightmare, my children were 5 and 2. Two and a half mile walk to shops (no bus or car and no deliveries except mr Corona fizzy pop man), hose pipe from bath to garden, very limited washing facilities for laundry and completely on my own.

Yes I definitely do, I was 15 and last year of school, going down the beach everyday with friends, & some of the boys who had a portable record player and played beach boy songs, greatest hits I think & some very appropriate for on the beach. Those were the days… of ‘76’

I should remember the heatwave of 1976 as our son was born on 5th August but to be honest I don’t remember the heat as being much of a problem. He was a planned home delivery and couldn’t wait to be discharged by the midwife so I could take him out. In those days you didn’t take babies out before then. Our first outing was to the local park and I can rember it being a lovely day. Being younger I think we were more resilient to the heat and there wasn’t all the scaremongering that we have nowadays. We just got on with it!

I remember syphoning bath water out of the bathroom window in order to water the courgette and tomato plants.

I started work in Control for the fire brigade in North Yorkshire
I remember the ongoing moor and heath fires we had

Had my second child in June '76. She arrived about 4 weeks early - don't blame her in that heat! But moved house when she was a few weeks old and the older one, and the baby screamed non stop for what felt like weeks on end! It was nightmareish ..............I vowed never to have another child or move house again (did have another one in 79 but didn't move house for about 20 years!). I do remember feeling guilty every time I washed nappies because of water shortages and re-cycling as much water as one could (washing up water etc) on the flower beds! The heat seemed to go on forever. Worst was having a rubber sheet on the bed in hospital after I'd had my daughter!

My childhood wasn't a happy one so we will leave it at that.

Heat wise - very hot. That's it. That's all I have to add

I was a WPc in a gritty Northern town in 1976. Despite the heat, day after day, we had to ask permission of the Inspector to adopt "shirt-sleeve order" - not always given! I remember patrolling the streets at Two in the morning hearing the snores of the residents with their bedroom windows wide open. Oddly enough, there wasn't too much burglary - presumably because the burglars were too hot to be bothered! During the day, we patrolled in our Hillman Imp panda cars, which were like little ovens. The sergeant sent us to patrol the local park one afternoon: "And I'll be checking your ar**s for sunburn when you get back". Most people enjoyed the sunshine, and I remember it as a generally happy time. One saw a different aspect of the British character in that relentlessly sunny hot summer.

I was in my first job, started in 1975, and remember getting really hot and bothered on the bus to work, only having 2 sets of clothes suitable for work and having to keep washing them each night so that I had something clean for work.
Going on my summer holiday with my parents, camping on the banks of the River Wye and the blessed relief of swimming in the river, followed by the revulsion on getting out of the water and being covered in small slimy creatures that looked a bit like leeches but which thankfully washed off.
And the cows in the field across the river, presumably normally safely contained there, being able to wade across the river, wander round the field our camping club was in, and one trying to get into Mum and Dad's tent.

I finished my 'O' levels and spent 3 weeks of the summer on a local archaeological dig. It was the most fun I had. Using a pickaxe to break through, wheeling wheelbarrows full soil and meeting people from other parts of the world and having a laugh. Loved being in the sun, though my skin didn't!!

I remember it well. Long, hot, glorious summer, not to be compared with the last few days in southern/eastern England at all. (I'm advised by fellow Glaswegians that summer 1976 was a bit mince up here and they get tired of being told how dry and hot it was when it wasn't!)

I finished at university by completing my PGCE, helped my parents move from Hertfordshire to Berkshire, got married, spent a delightful honeymoon in the Cotswolds and moved to Hull where we were both due to start work in September.

The thing about 1976 wasn't that it was hot; it was but not record-breakingly so as the daytime temperature stayed in the low 30s throughout. Fahrenheit was more commonly used then and the headlines were about temperatures breaking 90F, which is just over 32C, so nowhere near yesterday's 40.3C in Lincolnshire. The thing about 1976 is that it was extremely dry, with not a drop of rain falling in many places between the Saturday of the Lord's Test in mid-June until August Bank Holiday. That after a very dry winter and spring and, almost forgotten because of 76, the long hot summer of 1975! It helped that once the weather broke in '76 it rained almost constantly for two months but the prospect of drought remains a problem on top of silly temperatures like yesterdays.

I should add that in Scotland yesterday it was a bearable 32C and just the kind of hot summer day I remember from 1976. It was still freakish for Scotland though.