A Nostalgic Holiday in Pictures

I spent a huge chunk of my childhood holidays at Weymouth Bay, Dorset. Every Whitsun week 12 members of our family hired a beach house on the seafront. I have many happy memories of donkey rides, streakers on the beach, walks along the promenade, the smell of salt and vinegar on chips, lardy cake, cornetto ice creams, the vile mixture of suncream and sand, wormcasts, brightly coloured windbreakers, and of course.....rain.

As it turns out, my 2010 retro trip did not disappoint. Here it is, in pictures....

The sun breaks through the window of our below par B&B, Friday morning. Things look promising....

A mixture of sunshine and clouds and a beautiful, freshly raked beach at 10am. The kiosks look the same as they did 20 years ago.

Weymouth Bay - just as I remember it.

The vintage windbreaker. This has appeared in countless photographs and is still going strong. This windbreaker and I are approximately the same age however; having been well looked after, in a bag my grandfather carefully made by hand, this windbreaker is looking a lot better than me. Twenty years ago this windbreaker was one of many on the beach. In 2010 it is the only one.

The only part of me fit for public consumption. My recently pedicured feet.

A brooding sky which can only mean one thing.....

The inside of the kids tent as it rains. We pack up and go home.

Colour along the promenade helps to lift the gloom.

More gloomy skies with sudden bursts of sunshine.

And yet more gloomy skies....the beach which had been packed to full capacity hours earlier, is now deserted.

I still don't think I have ever been on a pedalo. Yet again they look the same as they did twenty years ago.

Sitting in the car by the harbour on a very rainy Saturday.

During a quick dry spell I managed to snap the very first holiday home we stayed in, in Trinity Street. Previously next door to a funeral directors and with a stinking brewery at the end of the road this cannot , at the time, have commanded the highest price for a holiday let. Today however, the brewery has been turned into a small shopping centre and the area gentrified with swanky bars and a bistro in the building where the funeral director used to store dead bodies..... One of the only signs that times have changed.

In just a few hours I will be off on my last holiday alone with Bushman, to the New Forest. After that the baby is allowed to come out but certainly NOT before I have had my very expensive pregnancy massage.