Building holiday memories

I think it’s quite easy as an adult to forget what holidays are like when you’re young. Seeing the Wee Man brimming with excitement for months, weeks, and finally days until ‘is today NO MORE SLEEPS?!’ suddenly arrived, I was transported back my own heady days of waiting for a holiday to arrive…

There was the thrill of building sandcastles on the beach, hours of racing the tide and waiting for the sea to finish creeping up to the entrance of your castle most, bringing that final touch to what was sometimes the fruit of many hours of careful and intricate labour… and then watching the sandcastle disappear in just the space of a few minutes, it’s prior existence completely erased and a totally new canvas provided for the next days building.

The joy of being allowed several ice creams in the space of one week, all in interesting colours and a whole new range of flavours, dripping slowly down chins and hands and inevitably getting covered in sand, ending up gritty but still entirely edible.

Exploring castles, forests, hills and mountains; and coming ‘home’ to a holiday accommodation equipped with bunk beds (which were just the BEST THING EVER) and perhaps having a tea of fresh fish and chips straight from the sea (well the fish, anyway. I don’t think that potatoes thrive in the sea).

And not forgetting swimming in a holiday pool, usually with a chute of some kind, refusing to leave until our bodies were completely prune like.

No surprise then that the Wee Man and Bubby D were enthralled by the bunk beds in our family room in a youth hostel close to Shrewsbury. Squeals of delight were accompanied by enthusiastic bed hopping as they chose their respective bunks. Bubby D has never slept in a ‘grown up’ bed before, and so she was thrilled to have a bottom bunk to herself, and the Wee Man was fairly ecstatic that he got one of the top bunks (not so much the Other Half, but then he is so tall that any bunk was going to be a bit on the small side for him!)

Moving on to Wales, we found a beach and the dam building commenced – accompanied by the Wee Man’s inflatable shark who bobbed around happily in the resulting lake we created.

Ice creams were eaten. Clothes were shed. Paddling was undertaken by the men, children and dog whilst I and my mum relaxed in the beach tent.

There was pool swimming. There were castles. Tea and cake was eaten, and the countryside was explored.

It all brought back some wonderful memories. And what’s even better is watching the Wee Man and Bubby D create new memories of their own.