your holidays as a kid

[nelsonone]

what were your childhood holidays like......mine usually involved visiting with one of my grandmothers (my parents both worked) as both were widows and loved having company and both visits normally involved water

my gran on my mother side had a french bakery in Bondi (Sydney) right by the beach...so it was like paradise....pies + cakes all day and at the beach in the afternoon when gran handed off her duties to the people who worked for her....I used to go to the beach later on by myself to ride my surfboard all day once I got a bit older and was already surfing at home

my gran on my dad's side lived just off the Fulham rd in London....this was a good 36 hours via plane (by myself) to see her back then so I didn't see her as much as a kid (more as a teenager and young adult).....London used to blow me away back then (swinging '60's) and I'm sure I used to walk around with my eyes and mouth wide open.....she also had a place down near Dawsey's in Dorset (near Durdle Dor.....sorry if that spelling is incorrect) and despite the water being freezing I was always in there pottering about

of course it was great when the grans came to our house or our beach house for the summer.....we lived on a lake and the beach house was up the coast at a place called Hawke's Nest on the mid North Coast of NSW...great place for surfing and we had lots of great mates who also holidayed there regularly

No matter wher we were or what we did we always seemed to end up in the water on our childhood holidays....

[marc26]

jeez.......holidays as a kid
we were so poor all i remember is we would be dead broke the following weeks after coming back and they were never any flying involved

we did go to my cousins a lot and that was fun

i will say when i got in my teenage years and my brothers and sisters were too old and uninterested in going on holiday, my mom would always take me and one friend of my choice away for a week. she'd just read her books all week and we'd go out and find trouble. lady was a trooper

[marc26]

going to grams.....


my whole family is from Charlestown. use to be one of the roughest neighborhoods in Boston.
nowadays its yuppyville. before all my relatives were in 3 decker tenemants. but all close in the same block so that was fun

[dawsey]

Great thread Nels

Its Durdle Door BTW and its pretty close to me

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?im...Den%26s a%3DG

My childhood couldn't have been more different to yours really. My Father was a manual worker, a carpenter, and worked all hours God sent to buy our first house in Poole. Up until then I was raised in London in the 50's. Basically, as kids our holidays stretched to a caravan for a week in Weymouth as money was so tight. My first foreign holiday was at 13 in Paris and I remember it like yesterday.
The place seemed so glamorous and I felt like a king in the Moulin Rouge drinking champagne 555. Eventually, the old man made good, and we were pretty well off, but too late for the family holidays by then. I was a teenager in the late 60's enjoying everything. We were never short of food and essentials, but I do wonder if my parents went without for me and my bro' and sister.
Happy Days!

[nelsonone]

thanks for the images and correct spelling Rog

wow....what an amazing place Durdle Door is.....last time I went there was when my gran was still alive....I'd say late 80's ish.......it's spectacular

yeah....I'd say I had a pretty priveleged childhood...never wanted for anything as both parents were professionals.....however life was pretty miserable there for a few years when they split up for a time.....just goes to show money doesn't mean much when happiness is questionned

[Iltis]

as a kid we used to visit our relatives in yugoslavia (now serbia) and we always stayed one week at the adriatic coast of croatia. we spent a lot of time in istria and also went down to the beautiful city of dubrovnik.

later in my early teens my parents took me to florida and thailand with them. as a single child i was very lucky that they took me on all their travels with them...

[nelsonone]

Originally Posted by Iltis

we always stayed one week at the adriatic coast of croatia. we spent a lot of time in istria and also went down to the beautiful city of dubrovnik.

Beautiful part of the world Oli....first went in the early 80's...people keep telling me it's overrun by Italians these days

[Iltis]

Originally Posted by nelsonone

Beautiful part of the world Oli....first went in the early 80's...people keep telling me it's overrun by Italians these days

i havent been there since 1990 Nels. i'll probably drive there in august for a week to check it out again... i have good memories of the places along the adriatic coast.

[likeitalot]

We were pretty poor as well. In the UK it was by bus to Blackpool illuminations. Drive in one side and out the other. That was as close as it got to a holiday.

In Oz drive to Gold Coast, certainly couldn't afford to fly and the last time as a kid was during my dads second marriage.There was me and my brother, 3 step-sisters, a step-brother and the two kids the parents had had within 12 months of eachother. So 6 preteen/tenagers, 2 babies and 2 adults in a
1960's Ford Falcon station wagon..what fun.

[nelsonone]

Originally Posted by likeitalot

In Oz drive to Gold Coast, certainly couldn't afford to fly and the last time as a kid was during my dads second marriage.There was me and my brother, 3 step-sisters, a step-brother and the two kids the parents had had within 12 months of eachother. So 6 preteen/tenagers, 2 babies and 2 adults in a
1960's Ford Falcon station wagon..what fun.

feck...that's a long drive in a sardine mobile mate.....555

actually....I remember me and my brother used to fill up the back floor.... behind the front bench seat....of my dad's black Humber Super Snipe (I loved that car) with pillows and blankets when we went on long trips so it was level with the seat and treat it as one big bed....couldn't do our trips like that now Nige....what with seat belt + safety laws....

[LivinLOS]

My childhood experiences were a bit odd to call holidays.. More like adventures.. And not all of them good.. But we travelled a LOT..

My old man took the 60's thing a bit too seriously and lived a bit of a buccaneering lifestyle, he was on the run when I was born (hence a rapid departure to Rep of Irl to lie low for a few years) and theres enough there to write a howard marks book. We moved a LOT too, the 3 times in my first school year were tough, and we were also not well off, more a focus of very different priorities in life than living the 'norm'.

Anyway him being very (mr) nice at that time of my life we spent large parts of time on the hippy trail in the 70's, driving in busses and campers to N Africa and back. Sometimes in Combis (VW campers) sometimes in convoys with others in more homes on wheels like horseboxes, converted military troop transports (that was a doozy in the desert !!), trucks etc.

My old man felt that travel for a young kid was as good an education as schooling, and I agree with him. I missed as much as 6 months of school a year and we lived a rough nomadic alternative lifestyle. I still remember some of those journeys vividly and the people we journeys with and lived communual lives with sometimes are strong memories. One guy called Carlo who was an ex services guy who dived right into the counter culture and pirate lifestyle a little too hard, screaming that military transport across the sahara desert chasing dust devils in circles with us hanging on the roof of the cab dressed like lawrence of arabia, when he killed a dust devils vortex of air we would be swamped in an layer of sand as it rained on us. Living on the beach south of agadir for months. Having our truck catch fire and burning everything we had crossing the atlas mountains south of casablanca, a very strange set of events that happened with a holy man deep in the desert. Just so many things. In fact since my old mans second divorce hes now back living in the rieff mountains playing old age pirates with some of his arab buddies right now. One of my 'uncles' it seems has become the king of tangiers in that game and lives like a lord with the usual bodyguards mercs villas and henchmen etc..

My old man always treated me like an adult and used to impress upon me the responsibility that I was the eldest and responsible in that way while he was away (as often I guess he knew there was a chance he might not be back). I remember the first time I didnt want to go one of the treks because of mates and things. I was 14 and they were going for 4 or so months and he let me live alone, take care of myself, go to school, do my own laundry, basically live alone. Big responsibility at 14 with money and stuff. I of course repaid that trust by getting busted, getting put in care, breaking out, and was home again when they returned !!

Also because he didnt work a regular job back then, he was able to jump on things on a whim, he was a merchant seaman as a young un (ran away to sea at 14 without telling his folks, they actually dredged the docks in South Hampton and were organizing his funeral when his postcard arrived from capetown !!) and all his side were dockers.. So we went down to the cutty sark tall ship race finale to see the glorious vessels and watch the fireworks. That night walking around, a 'crew wanted' sign saw me and him leaving the next morning for a few weeks at sea and another one of my best childhood memorys, massive storms in the bay of biscay where a amateur inexperienced crew put us in real jeapardy, dolphins in open ocean, climbing to the crows nests and in the rigging, all taken on 10 mins notice and a whim, that was my old fella through and through. He really does and did live a life less ordinary, no wonder me and my brother are the way we are and both cant handle living in the regulated western systems.

Just reminiscing and thinking of all of those times really does make me smile.. Mad how life is.

[nelsonone]

great post LiL.....feckin' wild....actually explains a lot about your makeup in there...I can just picture it having stopped a while myself in Tangier, Agadir, Rabat, Casablanca, Fez, Marakesh + the Atlas mountains thendown into the sahara....sometimes it seems so normal pottering about but within the bat of an eyelid it can all become so weird + foreign....can be a harsh land indeed!