I can remember walking around both camp fields and being told that the 2 fields were 16 acres in total. We explored the various wooden sheds and outhouses and I spotted a fantastic looking machine which was the grass cutter. It was almost like a mini tractor. I volunteered to drive it and my Dad said I could at some point after he had tested it out.
We also found a full sized actual tractor that my Dad said I could use maybe in the future. There was no safety roll bar but we never needed it. I did get to use it and it was great fun.
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| Our tractor looked just like this |
The site consisted of about 8 static caravans. When the season got underway my parents organised the bookings for these and there were many different visitors to these statics. There was one family that I remember very well and they were from Hanover in Germany and I spent the whole week hanging out with the 2 boys and I showed them around the local area and all the dens that we had found or made. I ate some of my meals with them and the one meal which sticks in my memory is a plate of meatballs which I still remember the taste of and I've been a vegetarian for at least 15 Years as an adult!
I used to love cutting the grass in the middle of the site, using the giant ride on lawnmower;
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| Ours looked similar to this |
tents were pitched around the outside of the field and the centre was left for playing games on, except one week when it was the Sidmouth folk festival and the site was absolutely packed with tents wherever there was a piece of grass there was some hippies camped (that's what they looked like).
I remember teaching one of my sisters how to ride a bicycle down the hill towards the shower block, but I can't remember which sister. The shower blocks were very old with 2 showers in the gents that cost 5p to operate. The toilets were outside and consisted of a wooden seat over a large smelly tank!
Sometime during the summer my mum and dad started an onsite shop, where we sold mainly chocolates and crisps, maybe more but I don't recall. Apparently the proceeds of the shop paid for our 2 weeks in Spain in November 1977.
My sisters and I made new friends every week and I remember my eldest sister changed her accent every week depending on who she had made friends with. In particular she mastered the Stoke on Trent accent to a Tee.
Our caravan had gas mantles for lighting and I can recall occasionally changing the mantles.
I had great fun driving my dad's tractor around the site, although I would be horrified if my children ever did such a thing.
I have a memory of my dad cleaning out the drains with some long poles after a blockage, I bet that wasn't a fun time for him.
During the holidays or at weekends we used to take our new friends of the week down to the sea, which was about 2 miles away. Whilst I'm thinking about the sea, I had asked for a pair of flippers (fins) for my birthday in March and went straight down to the stormy sea and lost them when a giant wave crashed over me. The sea was freezing and I should not have been there on my own. Quite dangerous and I wouldn't have let my kids do such a thing. Different times, I suppose.
