Virtual Vacation!
Today's Virtual Vacation was inspired by a conversation on local public radio about Cliff Richard, a very popular 1960s English singer, one of his most popular songs was called Summer Holiday. I remember listening to it over and over again on the radio.
Today we are visiting Shaldon on the south coast of Devon. My family spent several probably 3 or 4 summer holidays in Shaldon, I think from 1960-1964. My dad took all of these photos, they were part of the 14,000 slides I inherited after his death.
The village is on the south side of the river Teign estuary across from the bigger town of Teignmouth. These fishing boats are pulled up on the shingle beach directly in front of houses, you can see how high the doors are so the water stays out when the tide is in. The river is tidal but does not have the big changes in water level that many beach areas do when the tide is in.
We stayed in what would be called today a holiday let, or vacation rental, we had the whole house, and usually took our holidays with some family friends who had children of similar age to my younger siblings. This provided 4 adults who could take charge of children at the beach, while others made meals, or did the washing and cleaning.
The house on the right side of this building was where we stayed, the blue and white Bedford van was ours. The friends had the left side of the house.
This is the view from the front of the house, with the van, you can see how close we were to the beach. Just around the corner on the right was a bakery, we had fresh whole wheat bread for breakfast every day. And the shop sold fresh honey still in the honeycomb, it went very well with bread that was still warm.
This is part of the beach.
When we had holidays in Shaldon there were 2 ways of getting across the river, the first was to drive a short distance up the river and drive across, but if I remember correctly it was a toll bridge and then you had to find somewhere to park. The other way to get across the river was the ferry directly from the beach, it took all of about 10 minutes.
The river had lots of fish, I'm not sure what type of fish but they were big, probably about 2 feet long, and I assume were salt water fish. Every day when the tide was turning, fishermen would walk out into the river with one large net that they held between them, then they would come together in a circle and walk back to the beach with a net full of fish. It was very exciting to watch the net being dragged in with the fish wiggling wildly in the net.
I had a new swim suit one year and I thought it was the most beautiful I had ever seen, I never got it wet!
This is the village lawn bowling green.
One day we drove to another beach not very far away, this beach was quite flat and the tide was out, so the water was a long way from the top of the beach. My dad decided to drive the van out about 200 feet or more onto the beach, of course it got stuck in the wet sand, after a tow truck pulled it out and my mum calmed down we had a very nice afternoon.
