The hot old Summer of '76

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Now what was I doing these 40yrs ago?

In my first summer holiday as a full-time student having completed my first year at Strathclyde Uni studying Architecture. I was working as a hotel porter in a hotel in Pitlochry. Up at 5:30am to get the rolls for breakfast from the baker up Pitlochry Main Street (the A9). Hand over to the Night Porter around 10:30pm (60hrs a week for the princely sum of £16)

With 4 hours off in the afternoon it was either up to Pitlochry Golf Club for 18 holes (always by myself) - sometimes hanging around with auld Jimmy the club pro watching him do a lashing or fixing a club on the bench behind the pro shop counter. Or down to the mega Pitlochry putting course or to Loch Faskally with others for a bit of footie with the guys from McKays andf Fishers Hotels followed by a sunbathe and swim in the loch with the lassies

Glorious...happy days

 

[CliveW]

I started my flying training with Bristow Helicopters at Redhill in June 1976. Flying every day without doors, the only way to get any respite from the heat was to fly high but this was nigh on impossible in Gatwick's Terminal Control Zone and old piston engined aircraft. No aircon in cars in those days either so it was like an oven when you opened the doors. Also the TV weathermen could think of nothing to say as every day was the same as the one before.

 

[huds1475]

Will have been coming up to 15 months old.

Can't recall much !

 

[Fish]

Had a couple of years at a privately owned builders merchants whilst waiting to join up.

Unloading 20 tonne of warm cement bags or plaster by hand on your own, the plaster bags were huge back then and you really knew when you'd handled a couple of deliveries a week and sometimes the same day.

6 day week for £15 which paid my keep, my beer and footy all weekend, coach to London and ran a FS1E.

 

[chrisd]

I had been married for over a year. We went to Bournemouth for a holiday that year and I got my legs badly sun burnt !!

 

[Imurg]

End of my first year at Grammar school...
On Mondays, we had 1/2 hour break in the mornings due to a weekly staff meeting.
Obviously, a game of footy was organised, a couple of dozen 11/12 year olds tearing about like mad things in heat similar to yesterday.
We had Music after break on a Monday and I remember having to put tie and blazer back on, stand in a non-ventilated music room trying to sing...
The eyes started going, the legs started to buckle and before I knew it I was on the floor - spark out!

Also Scout summer camp in a hotel in the middle of Luxembourg - if you thought it was hot here - several days it was just too hot to move...

 

[sawtooth]

I was in the garden burning ants with a magnifying glass.

 

[Deleted member 15344]

Bet it was hotter were I was

My dad was stationed out in Malta so we were living there - can remember being on Golden Bay Beach

 

[PhilTheFragger]

End of my first year at Grammar school...
On Mondays, we had 1/2 hour break in the mornings due to a weekly staff meeting.
Obviously, a game of footy was organised, a couple of dozen 11/12 year olds tearing about like mad things in heat similar to yesterday.
We had Music after break on a Monday and I remember having to put tie and blazer back on, stand in a non-ventilated music room trying to sing...
The eyes started going, the legs started to buckle and before I knew it I was on the floor - spark out!

Also Scout summer camp in a hotel in the middle of Luxembourg - if you thought it was hot here - several days it was just too hot to move...

Ah little Bro, the heat must have addled your brain for Luxembourg was 1975, and your autocorrect has changed hovel to hotel 😂.
76 summer camp was on the foothills of Cader Idris near Barmouth, south Snowdonia .

It was incredibly hot, I was 14 1/2 so too young to make the most of it.

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Only ten and the year I got into golf with a week of lessons at Sandown Park. Days spent in the park all day playing cricket or football and not a care in the world

 

[Hobbit]

Just finishing my highers before a summer off, then uni. I do remember playing lots of golf, typically 3 rounds a day and practicing.

 

[upsidedown]

Working on local dairy farm in school holidays hauling hay and straw bales back to farm then stacking in barns with corrugated tin roofs and then after work showing current girlfriend where the bales were with copious amounts of Woodpecker cider, shame her name wasn't Rosie

 

[Doon frae Troon]

1976 I was HGK at a Surrey heathland golf course.
My absolute nightmare was a gorse fire, everything was tinder dry.
Water was very restricted with the proviso on some other local courses that if you used it the irate locals threatened to dig up the greens.

The drought was preceded by a very dry 1975 autumn/winter...I recall cutting the greens three times that December, very unusual in those days.

 

[bobmac]

My parents never had to worry about where I was or what I was doing.
If it was dry I was playing golf.
If it was raining, I was in the clubhouse waiting for it to stop.
Got down to 2 in '76 so it goes to show it pays to play and practice.

 

[MegaSteve]

Lost two stone in weight that summer.... Nothing to do with the heat but being in sheer panic at the thought of getting wed...

 

[SatchFan]

I was still at grammar school. Played every day of the summer holiday with a minimum of 27 holes per day. I remember the course looking like an alien landscape with acres of beige concrete and eighteen green circles dotted around.

 

[IanM]

End of my first year at Grammar school.....

..poor old soul, we must be the same age.... I remember playing cricket on rock hard pitches and lightening fast outfields... scoring 81 against Pompey Grammar School but still losing, Viv Richards got a double hundred (I think!) at the Oval.... the local pond we fished was running dry and fish were netted to put into the river. It was hot...bloomin lovely... I think summer holiday was 2 weeks in a caravan in Selsey. Probably all my folks could afford, but it was beach every day and outside meals every night.... wonderful stuff.. (kids today eh? )

It rained for weeks once it broke!

 

[Jensen]

I was 8 and remember playing football in the street,and 44.
The thing that sticks in my mind is plagues of flying ants, street paths that had cracked and warping in the heat and reservoirs drying out.

 

[patricks148]

Tarmac melting and sticking to the wheels of my Skateboard.

 

[jim8flog]

Holiday on Jersey in a tent. Nowhere to get away from the heat.

The misses and I got severely sunburnt after we went on a round the island cycle trip. We thought the cycling would cool us down!!