Kids of the 70's/80's - what did you do playing out that would horrify people today?

[IncompleteSenten]

I grew up in a pit village and we'd play on the pit tip, including round the slurry pond. We'd chuck sticks in and try to get them round the other side, we'd climb up and slide down the tip mounds. I only remember getting chased off once, it's bonkers to think it was all mostly open and unguarded!

There was a big open sewer? Storm? Drain or massive pipe with a grill across it that had been prised off and we used to go in there. I don't really know what it was, just that it was metal and massive and a bit wet and smelly and you could crawl quite a way in.

An old pit tip that time had grassed over but was not all that stable and had a chunk out the side of it. We called it "holey hill" and would sit in the carved out bit and make it bigger.

There was a stream with a big tree next to it. We had a rope tied round a branch and a stick to turn the rope into a swing. One side of the stream had a really steep banking and we had a massive knife and took it in turns to swing as high as possible and stick the knife into the banking. The next person had to swing to get the knife and then swing to put the knife higher up the banking. The winner was the person who got it so high nobody else was able to retrieve it.

Gathering hay from the fields and making a massive pile under a tree (different tree) then climbing the tree and jumping off it onto the hay. Bonus points for fancy jumps.

Playing chicken across the new road (it's still called the new road even though it's been there 40 years now and the old road's been buried for 30)

Climbing onto the row of garages at the bottom of the estate and jumping from one roof to the next.

God, so many!

I was chatting with my mum the other day and was reminiscing about all these games when I noticed my mum had gone absolutely silent.

She had no clue what I'd been doing all that time. She'd assumed I was just in the park. (Nobody played in the park. Who wants proper swings and slides when you've got pit tops, slurry ponds and knife games 🤣)

Ah yes to making dens, Yorkie. That’s like the brightest side of childhood! Yes, we’d make dens at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning and wait for dad to wake up and make us palačinky (pancakes).

As a kid it was playing out all day with the expectation that we'd go to someone's house & get fed somewhere (my mum did a fair share of the feeding)

Playing in rivers and tunnels, climbing trees etc

As a young teenagers (13,14,15) it was probably our ability to far away from where we should - after a coach trip to London to a battle of the bands contest (on a school night - we turned to school as normal the next day and no one bat an eye 🙄)
We then realised we were only an hour on the train from Camden, the absolute Mecca for a group of wannabe "alternatives" or whatever we called ourselves 🫣 and could be gone all day if we told our parents we were at the local shopping centre 😂

Kids are weird 😂😂

Given this thread I think she may have been right 🤣

Playing on building sites. Climbing the piles of sand, sitting on the diggers, wandering in and out of the half built houses, riding our skateboards down inside the huge sewerage pipes which hadn't been connected yet.

Tree swings - oh they were epic! They were huge and swung out across roads, ravines and rivers. I do remember one dad coming along and sawing one down though - how we booed him!

Playing in the burns all summer, splashing all the way down as far as we liked, no adults around, it was magical.

Getting pulled along on roller boots or skateboards behind friends riding their BMXs.

Massive games of rounders with all the kids on the estate, that went on until it was dark and the parents were hollering us home from the front door.

I had a fab 80s childhood.

My parents were considered strict and I didn't have as much freedom as some friends. However my best friend and I would go out for long walks in the countryside through fields and along footpaths during school holidays. Sometimes we did a "penny hike" where we'd flip a coin at the junctions and go left or right depending on heads or tails. So sometimes we genuinely had no idea where we'd be going and neither did mum. We were probably 13 or so doing this. 2 young girls roaming about half-lost on remote rural footpaths. This was early 80s so any phoning home had to be from phone boxes using a 10p or 2p coin. I remember once we ended up miles from home when dusk was falling and phoned to say we'd be getting the train back nearer home. I don't think I'd let my children do the same now. It was idyllic though I don't remember meeting other people much, we really did have the place almost to ourselves. It wouldn't be like that now (SE England)

A lot of climbing so up big trees, running along the top of the walls which were supposed to keep us off the railway embankment, climbing out of the bedroom window and shinning down the drainpipe.

Spent hours playing on bomb sites, digging up piles of soot on the allotments, chalking on pavements to leave a trail for friends to follow. Using bomb sites as adventure playgrounds.

Wandering down to the flooded fields and catching frogs, walking along the river embankments until we came to an estuary too deep for us to cross. Making 'sandwiches' to eat using leaves and indeterminate plants.

Hiring a rowing boat, catching the bus to school friend's house or to town to museums or to wander round the shops. Spending hours in various parks. In summer you played out till it became dark. Children walked to school or got the bus alone from 7. My friend aged 9 took her brother 7 and sister 5 every Sat by bus to meet their Mum in town when she'd finished her shift.

My Mum never enquired where I was off to. Typically you said 'going out now', Mum said 'don't be late for dinner at 1' and you joined the kids out playing in the street or knocked on doors until you'd gathered a goodly number and then you mooched off.

Often used to wander into old people's houses ( put me off Victoriana for life) to see if they needed errands running.

All when I was under 11 ( 1950s).

Went to London by train aged 11 with my sister 13, nearly 14. Met by uncle and taken to catch boat train to Newhaven, then boat to Dieppe, then boat train to Paris where we were met by cousin of family we were going to stay with. He put us on the night train south to where we got off at 5 am and were met by the family we stayed with. We'd done the journey several times before with our mother but still.....

On the other hand my great aunt emigrated to America aged 15 in the 1870s leaving her family behind! so seems quite tame in comparison - at least we knew where we were going.

Playing on the building site at the back of our house...in a weird twist of fate I am now living in one of those houses (well a bungalow). I'm dying to rip the plaster off the kitchen wall to see if " (my name) luvs (his name), is still etched into the brickwork. 😂

I grew up in a very rough council estate. When me and my pals wanted to play "Houses" ( about 7/8 years old) we would chap the doors in all the flats and ask if they had a baby we could take out for a walk....AND THEY WOULD GIVE US THEIR BABIES. We'd bounce them down the stairs in their massive prams and walk them about the estate pretending they were ours. Sometimes if we couldn't get any babies we would take stranger's dogs out instead.

We also climbed onto the roof of garages and then play dead man's fall back off of it. There was lots of making dens. There was also lots of organising "square-gos" (fights) with other kids.

We would all go up to the train track and slice down on it on bumpers of cars. How dangerous was that. Also we would go off for hours together, jumping off shed roofs and off the church grotto etc. It was safer in our town but the things we did certainly not.
Lesina what was that like watching the riots. Am Irish living in the west.

Playing in a local disused quarry. Playing on building sites, climbing scaffolding, balance beaming the upper floor joists and roof thingies. Playing right next to the local train line, like no fence and inches away.
No wonder they did all those safety adverts aimed at kids.

It was called Hunt the Shit.

^

😂😂

Played on railway tracks. Went hedge hopping over people’s gardens. Played knock door and run. Drank quite strong cider from 12 onwards….

Dh and his friends used to play in a disused tannery. Apparently there were huge vats of weird liquid left behind that would dissolve you if you fell into them 😱 they also used to play in a disused airfield that had old WWII hangars full of machinery left in them.

We used to go out all day with jam sandwiches, often to the woods over the fields to build a camp, then walk down near the railway lines. Parents never asked where we went, sometimes it was down the park on our bikes or climbing trees or playing in the brook. We used to collect bottles to take back for the deposit to spend on sweets

We used to climb the massive grain mountain in the barn at the farm down the road. We could easily have got sucked in and suffocated. Never crossed our minds. As older teenagers me and DB had friends on another farm. We used to build deep tunnels and camps in the hay bales. I shudder thinking about it now.

Cheap, homegrown entertainment 😆

Reading this, it makes sense why my mum, who was a child of the 60s and 70s, and who had a similarly neglectful childhood as described here, kept me and my siblings very much under her watchful eye!! We were allowed to play out but the naughtiest thing we did was knock down ginger and prank calling.

Cheap, homegrown entertainment 😆

^

Who needs tiktok eh

We did this in secondary school PE lessons! 🤣

Like many others, used to go off for hours, riding bikes all over, through fields of cattle and sometimes a bull, balancing on water outlets over 'the cut'. Walked to and from school on my own in infants. Got bus across town in juniors. Used to play literally on the building site across from my grandparents' house. Did all sorts of stuff that I'd be horrified to find my children had done!

So many things

We'd play out for hours at a time and only come home when we were hungry or were called home for dinner or bed. We were unsupervised for hours at a time.

We'd go off cycling for hours. Never told our parents where we were going because we didn't know ourselves when we set off. Obviously we'd no bicycle helmets. We'd also get (and give) lifts on our bikes. You might have a younger sibling hanging off the back seat, holding on for dear life. Or be that younger sibling yourself . Traffic was lighter back then but even so, I lived in a city - this wasn't some rural idyll where you'd only see one car an hour.

Not me but some of the more daring kids would cycle on the road doing wheelies. Or hang onto the backs of lorries and get a lift (there was a name for this - scutting?).

We'd decide (as a group) to go swimming because the weather was nice. We'd run home to change into our togs and meet up in the queue for the pool. There were always queues if the weather was nice. Our parents only knew we were going swimming if we needed to ask them for money. Or if we couldn't find our togs (first swim of the summer) and needed help locating them. It was an indoor pool so there were lifeguards, but there'd be millions of kids (of all ages) in the pool with no parents supervising. I don't know how the lifeguards managed to keep an eye on everyone.

Lots of kids went swimming in the local canal - they'd dive in off the canal bank.

I was a girl guide and the leaders would take us off on hikes and day trips. They seemed really grown up to me but on reflection, I'm not sure any of them were actually adults. I think they were mostly in their teens (like, 16 or 17). Maybe the captain was over 18 but I think the rest of the leaders were still in secondary school.

Our friends got a tent one summer and half the neighbourhood kids a group of us slept in the tent in their suburban garden.

Just hanging around the streets was dangerous due to the amount of stray dogs wandering around. Some of the dogs weren't strays at all - they were just allowed to roam free all day. Obviously we'd pet them all. There were no parents with us to urge caution about approaching stray dogs.

We'd collect bees or wasps and set up 'homes' for them in jam jars with a few leaves and a flower or two to make it more homely.

We'd eat unlimited sweets. Well, limited only by how much money we had and how many quarters (of sweets) we could buy for that amount. Chocolate was nicer but sweets lasted longer. Nobody was bothered about healthy eating or tooth decay.

Sometimes I look back with fondness and I'm glad that I got to experience such a carefree childhood - and I'm probably the last generation to do so. On the other hand, I'm aware of so many things that could have gone wrong. It's only a matter of luck that my siblings, friends and I made it to adulthood with nothing more serious than scratches, bruises and the odd broken limb.

Climbing on school roof, climbing inside haystacks (they used to be square) running inside sewer pipes, walking behind people till they threw away cigarette doubts then picked it up & tried smoking it 🤒 🤮

Can't believe there's been no modern day mums on this thread shrieking their heads off!

Being a child in the 70s, can relate to a lot of this, some of these antics are hilarious!

I have a memory of getting on the bus by myself at age 6, but I've since thought, no that can't be true, but after reading this thread, maybe it was...?

definitely remember playing in derelict buildings, paddling about in streams, and there being v little adult supervision generally...

Even the place designed for children in my village was dangerous. There was a small playground. All the equipment metal. The seesaw had a handle you knocked your chin on. Everything was set into concrete. My sibling lost several teeth from falling off the play frame.

Once we'd both had swimming lessons and proved to her that we could stay afloat, my mum decided that my brother and I could go to the swimming pool alone.

Every Saturday we would catch the train to a town 6 miles away and walk to the swimming baths, crossing a dual carriageway on the way.

We would spend two or three hours swimming, diving and splashing about then make the return journey home. I was 8 and my brother was 10.

Can you imagine that these days?!