During the Summer my thoughts turn inexorably to childhood. It seemed to always be summer in the Sixties! At least, I don't remember any of my first ten winters! My hard-working Mum and Dad always enjoyed taking us kids away for a summer holiday. Like Cliff Richard sang, 'We're all going on a summer holiday, no more working for a week or two'. and we sang it as a family all the way to the coast till our throats hurt!
Back then these were still called Wakes Weeks in Lancashire, North West England, but rather than going to the nearby Pontins in Blackpool, they would get the map out and venture further afield.
Butlins was our destination: Pwllhelli in North Wales, not far from the iconic Port Merion, where the Prisoner was filmed and Minehead on the Somerset coast in South West England.
We would set off in the Zephyr at around the ungodly hour of 4 in the morning with the aim of getting in our chalet for lunchtime. It was great fun and we entertained ourselves in the back of the car with paper and pens and counting the different makes of car and trucks on the newly fangled motorways. Once there, Mum, Dad, Barbara, Irene, Steve, me and family friends like the Hindles and the Gotts slept in neighbouring chalets and basically lived outside.
Butlins was a magical park of childhood dreams. There were star-shaped decorations, pools, fountains, diving boards, parks, rides, woodlands, crazy golf, lakes, pedalos, rowing boats, shops and eating halls. There were always special events on organised by the redcoats too. I remember clearly a pirate day, where one of the redcoats, suitably garbed as Blackbeard, was thrown into the big pool by hundreds of screaming kids!
Me and cousin Susan Woods discussing launch procedures!
Butlins also had space rides dotted about and supercool mono-rails winding round the resort, which I thought were fantastically futuristic [still do!]. There were plenty of toy kiosks and comics stands too so us kids never ever got bored. I used to get boats on strings and plastic tugs for messing about with in the paddling pools. Stuff like Tri-ang Scalex boats and dead simple Hong Kong one peice plastic speed boat jobs.
Occasionally I would harass my Mum and Dad for other toys like a football, a die-cast and plastic cap rifle or even a Project SWORD ship or a Zeroid from the Woollies in town near the holiday parks.
Me with new cap rifle walking with Jimmy Hindle, My Dad's best mate
and his son, David, who we went to Butlins with. Looks like it's been raining!
I just can't imagine growing up without Butlins back then. Butlins was summer and summer was Butlins. God knows what modern kids would think of it now - probably like a Gulag - but in the Sixties, as far as we were concerned, Billy Butlin, the parks' founder, was a national hero on a par with Johnny Morris or Morecambe and Wise! I do miss it a great deal.
What are your childhood memories of summer readers?
What? No memories of Christmas, or sledging down snow-covered hills on crisp, Winter days? I also have warm (no pun intended) recollections of Summers when I was a kid, but I'm glad I can remember the Winter ones as well.
ReplyDeleteAh, Christmas! Sorry Kid, I forgot about those! Yes, I remember Christmasses or some of them at least. The icing on the year. Come to think of it I remember playing with my newly acquired Action Man on the snow-covered drive. He was dressed in the Arctic Patrol uniform and had ski's. He actually ski'd down the drive! ha ha! Thanks for cracking the ice and jogging my memory!
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