Friday 6 July 2012

#FlashbackFriday: Happy Campers

As a child in the 1970s and 1980s I almost always spent my main summer holiday camping somewhere in Britain or in France with my parents, sometimes with my granny and often with my mum's best friend and her family. I treasure many happy memories of these holidays (and also some tales of woe!). We must have stayed in so many places but the ones that stick in my mind are:
  • Skye in the summer of 1976 
  • Guernsey (my brother and I had german measles on this trip!)
  • pitching a tent in a thunderstorm in the Loire valley
  • Staying in the Dordogne
  • Brittany with its creperies
Hopefully my children will look back on our own camping trips with the same fondness. We are reliving the tradition by spending our main summer holidays under "canvas" with my parents. Here are a few photographs from the family archives showing some of our old trips.

My brother in the south of France as a baby: 



That was my parents' first camping trip as a family and they got everything crammed into a Mini for the trip!


The next few shots all have our faithful Marina on them. They were taken in the mid to late 1970s. The blue tent lasted many years and comfortably slept 5 of us on all our trips. I remember sharing a compartment with my Granny whilst my brother had a smaller compartment to himself. Being away often with friends of a similar age meant that we always had someone else to play with:


feeding time at the zoo!

Off to clean our teeth before bed 
The adults having a well deserved rest


The French trips introduced my brother and I to new tastes and experiences. Here we are sharing a picnic and it looks like my brother has a glass of wine!



Definitely happy memories to treasure forever.

2 comments:

  1. Great holiday photos!  Have many similar.

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  2. Love the holiday snaps!  Just think, our wonderful camping trips will be causing the same hilarity in about 20 years time....scary thought!  Thinks haven't actually changed all that much, bar the nightwear!

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