Your childhood summers

[CandidFruit]

Yes, I'm riding the waves of nostalgia and feeling sentimental at tbe thought of the upcoming school holidays for my DCs.

Do you look back fondly of your summer holidays as a child?
I had a proper 80s childhood and teenagerhood - we were out playing in our quiet cul de sac, and the adjoining school fields (just snuck through the hedge! 😳) with friends until we were hungry or called in.
Other times we played with family friends at the local park and built dens and waded in the little stream watching sticklebacks.
There were tennis courts there so we'd do a bit of that too sometimes.
We all had bikes so were quite free to roam but we never went out of our comfort zone.
Parents just knew who we were out with and a rough destination of where we were heading but no tracker apps or mobile phones back then!

Do you have similar memories or am I just wearing my rose tinted spectacles?

I think it might be rose tinted specs! Ours were mostly a combination of dull and dangerous.

@Mindyourfinger Yes I reckon you're right.
But tell me more about the dangerous 😆

I grew up on a housing estate in a small village; lots of families with young children. Every summer holidays there would be a 'summer war'. We had quite a big garden and my parents had no problem with all the local kids playing in it, sometimes there were 20 or so.

My cousin stayed with us over the summer holidays in about 1983. We spent most of that summer either dancing or on our roller skates, skating along the promenade at the beach.

Wonderful days.

Sounds almost exactly like mine. And piling back to ours as the biggest house and dad making tea for a small hoard.

2 or 3 weeks away with the family in a caravan, usually France but also Italy or Spain, moving around municipal sites in towns the parents wanted to visit. Good fun.

I was a lot younger than my sister, so I was pretty feral. I was a latchkey kid, and I would be gone all day with my dog up the woods and the quarry, all over, but never came to any harm.
I remember the hot summer of 76 was the year I nearly died. I had extreme sickness. They realized I was having a lot of seizures only 45 years later. It was found out the seizures started due to sexual abuse. Anyway, I do remember lying in Mum and Dad's bed looking out at the sun; Dad sat by me, and the radio was playing Afternoon Delight. One day I collapsed on the bathroom floor, and my dad, crying, held me, begging me not to die.
After that, I went to a small secondary school for 3 years, and then when it was hot, days of lessons stopped, and we all jumped in the swimming pool! Less than 100 kids, and we had a fab time. coming home on the bus, we would be singing and so happy.

My childhood was in the 90s, we lived on a main road so couldn't play out but we had a massive garden, and the church yard next door to play in, and I could rollerskate round it, or on the driveway of the garage on the other side. When I was a bit older I could go with my brother to a nearby car park to play street hockey.

We often went away for a few weeks in the summer, I especially remember fondly the summers spent in Lapland, roaming the forest, fishing, swimming in the lake, staying up til gone midnight because the sun was still shining. Proper childhood.

Totally agree. Long, sunny days playing out, make believe games with friends and my brother, roller skating, big paddling pool out making dens and perfume punctuated by a lovely family holiday in Wales. We had a huge, private allotment (about an acre) attached to our garden and we spent hours down there. My dad's friend kept an old caravan down there and we were allowed to play in it. We used to take turns shutting each other behind the fold up bed!!

We had the biggest front garden being the corner plot so we also built dens there with dining chairs and candlewick bedspreads 😂
Yes we made "perfume" too, picking my best friend's granddad's (who lived opposite us) prize roses.
Also spent hours playing double ball against the outbuilding walls, and rounders in the cul de sac with my brother's cricket bat and a tennis ball, which, of course flew for miles!

Sounds pretty much like my childhood, except mine was in the 60's. We'd roam for miles (I lived in the country), climb trees, ride our bikes, build dens, go down to the river to look for frogspawn or sticklebacks. We'd reluctantly come in for tea and then head straight back out to play as fast as we could. And yes, make "perfume" in old jam jars with rose petals.

Very similar childhood to you. I'm 52 now. When I think about it,it makes me sad that my daughter won't ever experience that sort of childhood,or teens today 😞

Your childhood sounds a lot like my dc now. They often go out roaming through the fields and woods (we have friends whose land all adjoins ours). They go swimming in the river or a friend’s pond. They build dens. They make up games. They create secret hiding spots (the boys will have one and the girls will have one). They’re 7-12. We have a WhatsApp group so we can find them because one of us will know what field they’re in.

My summers in the 80s/90s were mostly just me watching tv at my grandparents because no other children around. From about 10, it was just me left at home alone watching tv because my mum had to work and it was too much for my grandparents to have me all day. Not very idyllic!

@amooseymoomum I’m sorry for your experiences, I sincerely hope you are in a good place now.

@Natsku your summers in Lapland sound incredible!

@Bbq1 your caravan antics made me snort - what larks!

We spent a couple of summers with family in Kent, so it was like something out of The Famous Five. Good times.

Yes, we lived in modern surburbia, 1970s and 80's built houses with shops, schools, library, church, hall, pub etc.

Our annual summer holiday would have been one week away in a caravan. Everyone seemed to know who was who in the area. It felt safe. We played out most of the time.

Once a week there was a youth disco on a Saturday night in the community hall. You could also get pop and sweets! A weekly youth club in the church hall that also did Brownies once a week. We would also meet up in the library to browse and get books.

I sometimes drive through there to reminisce, I'll park up and have a little walk and go to the shops we all used to go to. Separate butchers, greengrocer, bakery, now it's your generic Tesco Express, hair salons, charity shops. It's still a nice area though, the way property prices have gone I'm not sure as many young families can afford the houses anymore as a first home.

@CandidFruit I'm on my way to Lapland right now with my children, to give them a taste of that childhood experience, starting with the best way of travelling there - the night train

@Natsku I am not jealous at all!
How amazing! Do you have family there?
Sounds wonderful, what an adventure 😀

@3678194b are you still quite local to where you spent your childhood?
I love that you go back an reminisce!

@CandidFruit we're going to the farmhouse my mum grew up in. It belongs to my uncle now and he'll be there with a couple of my little cousins. It's my favourite place in the world.

@CandidFruit about 30 minutes away my parents lived there until they died. I recently had to sell the family home where they'd lived for 40 years

Mine was glorious. I grew up on an estate right at the very edge of a town, so it backed onto woods and fields. There were loads of kids and we all had younger brothers and sisters we were responsible for, so there’d normally be twenty odd kids wandering about. We’d play rounders in the road, build camps in the woods, have waterfights in the street and get the bottoms of our feet covered in tar from the road melting in the heat, because we’d taken our shoes off to stop them from getting wet. There was an old man who had a stream running through his garden and he’d let us have some frog spawn if we knocked with a jam jar, and we’d set up tadpole nurseries in our gardens. Occasionally, someone’s mum would come out with arms full of ice poles for us to share, which always seemed a yard long in those days. We’d all be out by 9am, rain or shine, and wouldn’t come home until the first mum started calling for us. We all knew that if we started trying to go in and out, that our mums would threaten us with having to stay in, and nobody was risking that. If you did have to go in for any reason, you’d come back out and wander about until you found a pile of bikes, home made go carts, bats and balls etc, and you knew your little gang would be somewhere nearby.

It sounds like we were feral, but we all knew to take care of the younger ones, stay away from the pensioners and not cause any damage to anything, and we knew if we did get up to mischief, it would have got back to our mums before we got home, because everyone knew each other, so there would have been trouble.

I was born in 81 so childhood summers in 80s and 90s.

My parents worked full time so we were looked after my a local teenager. We used to go to the video shop, rent a video and watch it and that was our activity. Outside that we went to sports camps at the local uni (which I LOVED) and a couple of weeks Eurocamping which I have very fond memories of too.

@WilfredsPies Yard long ice poles was definitely a thing back then!
One of our friends lived backing onto our primary school playground her mum used to shove them through the fence to us.
Can you imagine that happening now!

@garlictwist I bet everyone was so jealous you got to watch films all day long with your babysitter 😁

I was born mid-80s. Summer holidays were always calm playing at home, meeting up with family friends for days out and going for family road trips and days out. We never had holidays abroad but happy memories none the less

When I turned 9/10, my mum returned to work after being a SAHM and then summer holidays were spent being shipped from house to house for people to watch us and I hated it. We spent a lot of time with my great aunt and my grandmother, both lovely but it was so boring for a child. We would literally spend all day watching TV at my aunts house, and reading at my grans as she didn't have a TV. Other days we would be left with family friends we really didn't know and it was just so awkward. Some had kids we could play with, some didn't so we would just sit there afraid to speak.

And then once I turned 13 and my aunt and gran had both passed away, my parents split up and I had to watch my younger siblings. I couldn't have friends over or go anywhere. My siblings wouldn't listen to me and I hated being stuck home with them. I understand now how hard it was for my mum to juggle childcare and work full time but I'm still bitter about it

I'm trying to give my kids a good childhood and keeping my experiences in mind. I'm lucky that I work for myself so I try to just work one day a week during holidays and then work from home as much as I can so we can still do lots and give them a good summer.

My summer holidays were full of playing outside if it was fine and inside reading comics or doing crafts if it was wet.
Quite a lot of TV and relatives as well though.

We had a caravan in north Wales, and that is where the bulk of our summer (and half term, Easter and many weekends) holidays were spent. No money, so we looked longingly at the tourist leaflets advertising castles, zoos, "ten top attractions!" In the area.In fact we played around the toilet block more than I care to think, but also were allowed to explore the woods without parents, just roam around the site at our leisure. Once I fainted and no-one saw. The occasional BBQ, camp fire, fish n chips, lots of days at the beach with rolls and crisps, rainy trips to the town, swimming in the rain (sorry mum). Climbed Snowdon when we were older. Looked at castles from the outside and we looked on at the campers dashing to the toilet block in the pissing rain, feeling sorry for them. Lots of sunsets, storms, looking to the horizon to predict which way the weather was going. Then getting home to a weirdly empty house at the end of August to a pile of post knowing it was time for shopping for bags, pencil cases and getting ready for the new school year. Wouldn't change it for the world.

I was born in 96 so any summers I remember were early 2000’s. I have the best memories, lots of days out to beaches, theme parks etc, camping or caravan holidays and playing out on the streets, children everywhere having fun

Mine was exactly like this ,but in 60s and 70s