Remember the heatwave of 1976?

In '76 I lived in a flat and planted some Dahlias in pots on my balcony. Foolishly I watered them midday, only to see steam coming from the soil. I boiled those plants so could never forget that action by a young girl who knew nothing about gardening then.

I remember it well.
I was 14, and we went on school camp to Dorset and it rained for 3 days!
Also remember the plague of Ladybirds. It was a lovely summer though and I have many happy memories of it.

5 grans Chestnut- was pregnant with 3rd child - he arrived on 7th September- the day before the rains came!! Horrendous summer ? ? phew ?

I remember it well was pregnant at the time. I lived in London at the time walking to Guy's hospital for anti natal clinic. My daughter was born at the end of September. We moved to Kent when my daughter was 6 weeks old. It was hot but fun too.

I was almost 13 but can remember it very well, playing out all day every day without sunscreen, shades or hats! I don’t remember getting sunburn.
I remember Barnes Common which was quite near our house going up in flames and the choking smell of smoke

I remember I was 10, and went to the Lake District on our way to Scotland. The camping field had enormous great cracks in, and the grass crackled under your feet...First time i've ever seen Cumbria brown and not verdant green.

Also my Mum made us girls wrap around skirts for the summer, but to save fabric, and money, her wrap-arounds didn't wrap around far. In the slightest breeze we were in danger of showing everything, and Mum insisted I wore my best pants...'just in case!'

Oh and my Dad being very very sunburnt, and making me sit and peel his back

Sorry, yet another year when I was away from the U.K., in the Far East, with the RN. Frankly throughout the seventies I spent almost every minute of my life in the briefest of short shorts, sandals and burned black, as we said in those days, as an A - Rab. (Young footloose sailors hadn’t heard of elf and safety and we as politically incorrect as anything) - but by Christ were we happy and, as the various foreign folk we regularly encountered, saw us as Ambassadors for the British Commonwealth, they were pretty delighted to see us, and our money, too.

I was 18 and at Norland in Berkshire, a residential nursery nursing college which has since moved to Bath. Although I wasn’t particularly happy there I remember the Summer as being fantastic and I never wanted it to end. Ladybirds, loads and loads of them. The following year the Summer was dismal and from memory we waited awhile until another decent one came along.

I went Interrailing around Europe with friends for several weeks and when we got back my Dad had been collecting newspapers to show us that it had been hotter here than in Greece where we had been. He and Mum had slept outside in the garden for a few nights.
I can sympathise now - I slept downstairs on the leather sofa on Monday night, just too hot for bed.

My middle child was born on 11th July. I remember sunbathing in a bikini quite a lot and my huge bulge was very brown. After the birth it shrank back like a balloon and was almost black! Also swimming the day before she was born.

yes...but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now...seriously. we went camping with one year old and three year old in the forest of bowland and it rained and no one believed us. I tried to return some trainers that had fallen apart in the wet grass and they said that was impossible. Other than that I remember hanging the washed nappies to dry and flies gathering on them..and a horse giving birth in the field behind us. It was very deserted, have some lovely photos it was on a farm which was the highest in England I think. I sighed at another camping holiday and would loved to have gone somewhere and been looked after, cooked for etc and my husband (at the tine) said my whole life was a holiday.

Another pregnant one here! Son born in 3rd week of September. ?

Lessons outside in the shade; "I'm not in Love" and "Silly Love Songs"; First French Kiss; slathering on Bergasol sun oil and spending hours at the lido! ?

I was 1 we went to Scarborough for a week and stayed for a fortnight There was a plague of ladybirds

I was 11

Sitting my O Levels in a gymnasium . Kids passing out every now and then . ?

I was living in London and pregnant with my second due in October. Most days I pushed two toddlers in my double pushchair to the park where there was a children’s play area. One toddler belonged to a friend whose baby was due 2 months before mine so it gave her a chance to rest.
We lived in a tiny upstairs flat with no access to a garden so I would fill a bucket with water and plonk her in it to keep cool on the front steps. Happy days and I can’t remember minding the heat at all.
Very different now. As soon as it goes over about 32 degrees I feel wiped out.

2nd June 1976 - my birthday and we had just moved into a new house in Northamptonshire. We opened the blinds to a snowfall but by lunchtime there was glorious sunshine and a slushy pavement. The heatwave seemed to go on for ever during that summer and I remember the joy of it finally coming to an end with a thunderstorm.

Luckygirl3

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 remember carpets of ladybirds when on holiday in Saltburn. There was a huge number that year.

My daughter was born feb 1976 and spent all that summer outside in her pram . Do people do that now? Babies were always put outside as much as possible then .

Commuted into central London all Summer so remember hot trains so packed you could fall asleep on your feet then fall over when people off!

Left the job and given a leaving do with lots of drinks and just a few nibbles then going home and leaving the cool building into the heat which hit me like a brick. I was a bit drunk and getting on a bus and hanging onto a pole as it set off before I'd sat down!

I left school in the summer of 1976 met my husband then and started work all in one year! Busy year and ye sit was so hot we lived it!

Teaching in Hemel Hempstead during the 1976 heatwave meant that we held many classes outdoors in the shade of trees.

I remember it well. I moved to Plymouth in May with a new job and met my future husband. We used to go swimming at Whitsands Bay after work. I thought I was in Heaven.