Summer 1976

[SteviesNicks]

So we keep hearing on the news that we are set to break the records for the highest June temperature in set in 1976

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_British_Isles_heatwave

Were you around during that summer?
What are your memories of it?
I was 2 so don't remember a thing!

I took my O levels that year. We just got on with it. The fuss now is (in my opinion) OTT. I left school and worked that summer on a farm haymaking. It was bloody hot!
That winter (1976/77) was horrendous where we lived (SW) with snow a foot deep, came down overnight. I was at college and life just went on. I was a toddler in 62/63 - we only had an outside loo, glad I was in nappies!!!

Pretty much my earliest memory!

Ladybird 🐞 everywhere.

I was 15 and remember 1976 as the most amazing summer. We got into trouble at school for refusing to work in the temporary huts because they were so hot.
we didn’t wear suncream, sunhats or carry water bottles everywhere. We hitched lifts from strangers to save us the 30 minute walk to the beach and spent whole days in the water I’m not saying people should do that now because obviously we are more educated about the dangers now.
But we coped and we have very good memories of those days.

I was in utero. Must have had an effect as I can't stand the cold!

Never forget it, i was pregnant.
It was a beautiful summer though if not an uncomfortable one !

I was 6 and just remember long hot sunny days; my husband remembers having quick drying cement delivered to his house for the extension his parents were building- but it set within 20 minutes because of the heat and they had to get a pneumatic drill to break it up again!

I went on holiday stopped at a pub on the way every sq mm of it was covered with lady bugs. Several cars crashed because the drivers fainted. No air con. The caravan was so hot you couldn’t go in it.

Does this mean that global warming and climate change is 50 years on the go now?

Usually deemed to be since 1850-ish (when we started putting fossil fuels back into the atmosphere at a rate of knots).

I turned 7 that Summer. My most vivid memory of it is how dry everywhere was and the local grass fires. We lived near an AONB and huge parts of that were on fire, and there was a huge fire on the common land opposite our house. I remember watching from the front bedroom window and the flames were coming right up to the pavement on the other side of the road, I was worrying that it’d somehow spread across the road.

I’ve just bought this book which looks to be very interesting.

I was nine. I remember the hose pipe ban. We all had to share the same bath water and then my dad siphoned it out the bathroom window to water the garden.

I was at primary school in 1976 so I do remember the long heatwave & drought, but my memories are patchy.

Hot summers were much rarer in those day, of course, which is why it is such a vivid memory or people who were around at the time. The scary thing is that now 1976 doesn’t even make the UK’s top 5 hottest summers which have all been this century. They don’t get so many headlines now because we are so used to them.

I wasn't born as my mum was pregnant with me, I remember her telling me loads of times how unbearable it was to be pregnant in that heat 😂

Oh, goodness - I will have to buy that, it looks brilliant.

i do remember the lady birds, an invasion on a day trip to Brighton, awful.
i was 10 and that is all i remember

I was 17 and studying for A'Levels in sixth form. The previous year, the school purchased a large house next door with an outdoor swimming pool. None of my A'Level subjects took place on a Monday, but I was still expected to attend school, so Mondays, after registration, were spent sunbathing and swimming in the pool. I got through a couple of bottles of Bergasol sun lotion and had a great suntan!

I did my A-levels. Got an outdoor Summer job. Temporarily free of all worries, with money in my pocket. What wasn't to like?

Oh yes. I was 17. In Lower Sixth. It was just one fabulous sunny day after another. I remember lying in the sun one lunchtime. A a friend had a chicken leg for lunch and we all decided to rub the chicken skin on our legs to substitute for sun oil 🙄

I burnt my fingers on steam from a kettle and the sun was so hot it made my fingers hurt more than ever.

The peat moors spontaneously combusted deep inside the peat bogs and it took months for the fires to go out, even after the rains came.

Ladybirds, those lemonade ice lollies and the smell of really hot tarmac in our road.

I was 7 and it was our last summer in the house I was born in. I remember being outside in my garden and in the street all the time.- all the kids played out in the street so there were at least a dozen under 10s out there.

Reading all your memories of the 70s is making me feel very nostalgic for simpler times!

I was 16
I remember doing exams although I can't figure out what they were as I did o levels the previous year
it was obviously very hot and uncomfortable doing exams in that heat
so the boys, as a special favour, were allowed to take their shirts off in the exam room
one of the girls tied up her shirt round her midriff
she was told off and had to unties it because...
'its not fair on the boys, it will put them off'

...and you tell the young people that nowadays and they won't believe you!

I was 16 and we moved cities that summer

I was working in the City of London and commuting in by tube. I remember spending lunch times in St Paul's, blissfully cool. Loads of people sunbathing in the churchyard.

I was 8. We had talks at school from Wessex Water, and were given badges with "water is under pressure: save it," and leaflets featuring Effie the Effluent. I remember sharing bath water, and siphoning it from the bath to water the garden. And, of course, the ladybirds.

I also remember the sunburn. HUGE blisters across my shoulders. I still have the scars. I think of that often as I examine the freckles on my shoulders.