Family HolidaysBack in the 80s when my Dad got made redundant (hello Dad!), he spent all the redundancy money on one of those big motor caravans.
Us kids loved it, apart from when my sister threw up on my sleeping bag, but looking back I'm not so sure my mum did. There was a certain tension every time the big van was even mentioned, let alone driven around France for weeks on end with her still having to cook and do all the washing.
What went wrong, what went right, and how did you survive the shame of having your family with you as a teenager?
(
chthonic, Thu 2 Aug 2007, 14:33)
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Penlan Holiday VillageNear Cenarth, West Wales. My parents actually bought a chalet here, and I have no idea why - it was a god-awful place. I have memories of going there at Easter and seeing the breath in front of my face when I woke up - the reason being that every chalet was just a wooden frame with wooden slats on the outside to make it look like a wood cabin (read: shed) and fake wood veneer paneling on the indside. Aside from the chalets being draughty as all fuck, the heating it did have (oil heaters fed by a coin-operated meter) was completely ineffectual.
You'd have thought, then, that this would make it a good place to go, providing you went in summer. Well, despite the fact it was in the middle of nowhere, the entire site was like a timewarp back to the 60s, and you got the feeling it was never quite finished back then. There was a swimming pool, but the stale smell of urine was enough to put anyone off. The bar had a stage (with Phoenix-Nights style silver streamers decorating the rear, so you can just guess what kind of entertainment they put on) and a "cinema" which played VHS videos through a projector - I think the only films I ever remember showing were Pretty Woman and Short Circuit. Then the arcade - If I remember rightly the games were Outrun and Kung Fu Master, and a load of 2p fruit machines.
So - given all of this - imagine the shock when I learnt my parents were charged around £3500 a year (back in the 90s) for "management fees" which as far as I could see just extended to twice-yearly grasscutting around the chalet.
The whole place was so Po it couldn't afford the o and the r.
On top of all of that, my parents seemed to think that as a 14 or 15 year old teenager I'd want to spend time going on "walks". Joy.
Then once or twice a year we'd be lucky enough to go to Oakwood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Theme_Park) - whilst the Wiki article makes it look alright, back in the mid-90s Alton Towers it was not.
I've not been back to Wales on holiday since.
(, Fri 3 Aug 2007, 14:16, Reply)
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