Chronicles of a Vicarage Childhood

Trip! Eluned Rees recalls happy days at the seaside

The annual Sunday School trip every summer was an exciting highlight. No matter how many family holidays we had, this one day with our friends was even better. Our excitement was so great that Enfys and I would write ‘Trip’ on a piece of paper and put it over our eyes so that it would be first thing we saw when we woke! Usually we had good weather and would often meet children from other parishes.

Picture Credit: Glamorgan Archives

Arranging the trip, booking a bus to carry children and their parents, was no mean task, and choosing the destination was difficult in order to please everyone. The older ladies wore their Sunday hats, even at the seaside. I am sure that thousands of children in South Wales went to Porthcawl/ Barry/ Tenby many times. If the trip was to Pembrokeshire, it was felt we ought to visit the Cathedral but, to be honest, the appeal of the fair in Porthcawl with bumpers, Cakewalk and Watershot was far greater. The adults sat at the front of the bus with sandwiches ready for our lunch. There was no money, or tradition to eat in a café, and there is nothing like sandwiches, full of sand, on a beach, with a thermos of tea.

Neither Enfys nor I are very keen on heights and I remember my mother once having to ask the man in charge of a ride to stop it as we were screaming and sobbing so much. Not much has changed, apart from the sobbing! But the Ghost Train didn’t bother us - and we enjoyed the screaming then.

Ice cream in Barry, Knickerbocker Glory in Porthcawl, and stopping in Cross Hands for chips on the way home. For us country children, this was heaven. I don’t remember much sickness nor having to stop at the roadside. There was of course much less traffic before the M4.

By our teenage years, and the coming of the Youth Club, under my father’s brave leadership, there was a different atmosphere on the bus. The hormones were raging, quite a bit of canoodling, and the older ones had to be watched in case they ventured into a pub or club before the journey home.

My biggest problem at this stage was what to wear. I remember new sandals pinching from wearing them for the first time. Did we go into the sea? Think of the responsibility on my father who never went into the sea in his life. I don’t remember it ever happening.