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On ...
Great Yarmouth
Everyone’s coming !
The one abiding memory of the Great Yarmouth holiday in the summer of ‘68 is Birds Eye frozen peas.
It promised to be such a good holiday, for a start we weren’t going to Cayton Bay, I was 11 years old and had never been outside Yorkshire, had never had a holiday that wasn’t at Cayton Bay, and now for some inexplicable reason our Dad had come home and announced that we were going on holiday to Great Yarmouth.
We were stunned, we had never heard of Great Yarmouth, we didn’t know where Great Yarmouth was, was it still in this country. how many days would it take to get there ?
After all, if it took all day to get to Cayton Bay (which was still in Yorkshire) how long would it take to get somewhere that you didn’t know where it was and that you’d never been to before ? I have to admit that we kids took this news with a little trepidation, our dad may as well have announced that we were going to Darkest Africa to seek out Livingstone for our holidays.
But there was better news - our cousin was coming with us, not with his family, actually coming with us to be part of our family. The now world famous guitarist and empressario Ray Fensome (Fenno) was the same age as my younger brother and was always good for a laugh - this was good news, even if we didn’t know where we were going.
And there was better news - this holiday would be the first of many where we were joined by our parents best buddies Ralph and Joyce, - Uncle Ralph and Auntie Joyce to us kids even though they weren’t actually Uncle and Auntie at all (we had lots of Uncles and Aunties like that) - and their daughters Beverley and Tracey who were also the same age as us, this was promising to be the best holiday ever, even though we didn’t know where we were going.
The Journey
The journey to Great Yarmouth took all night. We left in the first few hours of Saturday morning in the dark, me, my brother and our cousin Ray all trying to sleep on the huge leather back seat of our dads Morris Oxford, what a huge car the Morris Oxford was, leather seats and walnut dashboard, a steering wheel off an ocean-going liner and a boot that held every piece of junk that our mother wanted to take on holiday with us, no longer did she have to sit in the front surrounded by last minute bags and parcels and bottles of milk that she’d forgotten to pack - it all went in the warehouse that was the Morris Oxfords boot.
Within minutes we’d lost Ralph, trying desperately to keep up with us in their family Austin Mini, Ralph lost sight of us as we turned out of his street, finally catching up with us ten minutes later as we waited at a bus stop 100 yards down the road.
Ralph would not lose us again, for the next six years he followed our car all over Europe on our annual holidays, never once did he stray more than six inches away from our rear bumper, so close did he drive that we could actually hold conversations with them, simply by speaking in a normal tone out of the window. Ralph jumped red lights by the dozen just to keep up with us, because although he had a map with him Ralph had a major problem with map reading for map reading needs three things - you need to know where you have just come from, you need to know where you are going to, and you need to have a vague grasp of which way up to hold the map - Ralph had none of these and so he followed us like a shadow for days on end.
Finally we all arrived in Great Yarmouth sometime during the Saturday afternoon, completely exhausted after travelling in excess of twelve hours we drove along the seafront - it looked quite impressive, this was no Cayton Bay, this was bigger than Scarborough, it had a long, long seafront, it had amusement arcades by the dozen, cafes and pubs in abundance, it had thousands of smiling holiday makers strolling along the seafront with its low sea wall and ready access to the beach, all of whom were pointing at us saying “look how close that Mini is driving to the big Morris Oxford”.
We’d driven right along the seafront looking for the caravan site that was to be our home for the fortnight and had still not seen anything that looked remotely like the sort of caravan site that we were used to - Cayton Bay for instance with its shops, amusements and most importantly its Rendevous Club where our dad would pass most of his vacation time.
 Great Yarmouth is strung out northwards along the East Anglian coast from the estuary of the river Yar (hence Yar-mouth, clever eh ?), so driving south along the Yarmouth seafront means that you can only drive so far until you hit the river mouth, which is were Great Yarmouth stops.
And the river mouth was where our caravan site started.
At first it all looked so nice, the seafront at Yarmouth is literally on the sea, there are no cliffs and the wall that seperates the road from the sea is only three foot high, so you can step straight from the pavement onto the beach.
As we approached the river mouth and the end of Yarmouth as a resort, the road moved back from the sea wall a little, not a lot just a little, just enough to squeeze a caravan between the road and the beach - a modern caravan mind, not one of the round-topped 1950’s rubbish that we’d had at Cayton Bay, these Yarmouth caravans were long and sleek, had a seperate bedroom at one end and, amazingly, plumbing - no more carrying out of the piss bucket in a morning then.
We kids pressed our faces up against the left hand rear window, these caravans were a vision of superbness, “No piss bucket Ned” I remarked to my brother, “They’re on the beach” he whispered in stunned admiration.
But something was missing. we had caravans, we had caravans in a superb location, right on the beach, no cliffs to scramble down, right on the beach they were, but there was nothing else, no “camp” to speak of, just caravans with a beach in front of them and a main road behind them, and the worst news for our dad - no club.
He stopped outside a portakabin, instantly Ralph stopped as well - that was another thing about our holiday journeys, although Ralph travelled inches from our rear bumper everywhere, he never ran into the back of our car, perhaps he was psychic or perhaps the Morris Oxford just couldn’t stop as quickly as the Mini could, maybe Ralph knew he had at least 30 seconds from seeing the Oxfords brake lights coming on to it actually stopping.
Our dad and Ralph went into the portakabin to check in, pay the rent and collect the caravan keys, when they came out I thought our dad looked a little subdued with the news that there was no “club” on the site, in fact it wasn’t a traditional holiday camp at all, just some caravans on a piece of wasteland at the end of the road, but at least the caravans were on the beach and there were plenty of sing-along bars just a short walk up the seafront.
Ralphs caravan was just a short walk from the portakabin so we all went to help them unpack first. Ralph was delighted with the caravan, it was brand new, literally one step from the beach, it had a sink with taps that had water in them, on demand, and the waste water went down the plughole into a proper drain - unheard of luxuries previously denied us at Cayton Bay.
Having gasped and “oooooh’d” and “aaaaah’d” at Ralphs caravan we set off to find ours, which we’d been told was some distance from Ralphs. We drove right down the row of beachfront caravans until we could drive no further without plunging into the River Yar, but still the caravan numbers were not high enough to include ours.
Finding our caravan
It was then that our dad noticed a small group of caravans some way in the distance next to an industrial estate, we’d ignored them at first as we thought they were gypsy’s but as we drove closer, and with heavy hearts, we realised that these caravans seemed to be of the same style as Ralphs luxury seafront abode, and driving right up to them we could see our caravan with its number stencilled on the front confirming that indeed here was our home for the next two weeks, parked on a triangle of hardcore next to an industrial estate behind the fish docks.
Sitting in the car everything seemed to be in shadow, it had been lovely and sunny at Ralphs luxury seafront abode, but here it was certainly in shadow, and the air had a bit of a nip to it, more like a fresh February morning rather than the warm August afternoon that we had left behind at Ralphs luxury seafront abode.
We all climbed out of the car, and indeed it was several degrees colder over here, looking up we realised why. Our caravan was parked right up against a chain link fence beyond which was the biggest Birds Eye frozen pea factory in Western Europe.
It towered at least 100 feet above our caravan, casting the whole area into permanent semi-darkness, the rear wall of the factory was a mere 20 foot from the fence and several storey’s above us a fire escape door was open and upon the external escape stairs stood a frost covered person clad completely in an arctic explorers outfit taking a smoke break.
We could feel the chill from the open fire door sweeping down towards us like a cruel blast of air straight from Siberia, we all shivered and went back to the car for a jumper whilst a few hundred yards away other holiday makers were stripping off clothes in the 80 degree heat and slapping on the ambre solaire - this was to be our frozen little holiday home for two whole weeks.
The noise from the massive air conditioning plant that kept the whole factory below freezing during the hottest summer for many years can only be imagined - it wasn’t quite as loud as a jet engine, but it was close, and it ran for 24 hours a day, causing us all to wonder what idiot had located holiday caravans within 20 feet of it.
And that’s not to mention the disturbance from the constant flow of heavily laden trucks bringing hundreds of tons of freshly picked peas straight from the East Anglian fields, they too ran for 24 hours a day, the pickers out in the fields working under floodlights right through the night as August was the peak of the petit pois season.
The frosty man on the fire escape in his arctic explorers outfit stubbed out his cigarette, took one last look at us, and shook his head before returning back to his sub zero place of work, shook his head as if to say “why the hell would someone be so stupid as to book a holiday here ?”
But we Kitchens (and one Fensome) are made of stern stuff, not for us an angry stomp back to the portakabin to shout and rant at the man to move us somewhere else, not for us a letter to TV’s Watchdog, “Dear Sir, our holiday home had a permafrost coating from the industrial unit next door, and arctic explorers taunted us day and night with their shaking heads of disbelief....”, oh no, us Kitchens (and one Fensome) put up with the minor inconvenience of no sleep for two whole weeks.
That is to say that we only returned to the caravan as and when we absolutely had to, the whole of the two weeks was spent down at Ralphs luxury seafront abode, and Ralph being Ralph, his hospitality knew no bounds, we kids cost him a small fortune in chocolate biscuits and pop and his ever-open caravan door had buckets full of sand swept from it several times a day after we’d gone there to get changed straight off the beach.
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