Summer of '76

[Dayvo]

Apart from the heat and the drought (and me spectacularly failing 80% of my O-levels ), what I remember is the plague of billions of ladybirds!
I remember playing cricket and the grounds were covered in ladybirds.
Here already there has been an unusually large number of ladybirds at the golf course, so it's not just going to be thousands of worms I (unwillingly) massacre when I cut the greens/fairways!

 

[Dayvo]

Some other highlights of 1976!

Went to Cambridge on a school trip. Acting the fool, I fell in the Cam whilst showing off punting, and had an irremovable hard-on for about five hours (took me pants of for some reason - but still had my trousers on) as I spent the afternoon trying to get better acquainted with Melanie Redding (unsuccesfully .

Lost my virginity at a holiday camp on the Isle of Wight! Awful experience! Drunk on Pernod!

Had a great three-week family holiday in Scotland - the highlight was listening to the cricket on the radio; England v Viv Richards!

I'd love to be able to go back and 'just as a spectator' have a look at the way things were back then!

It was a great year!

 

[Hilldodger]

I remember the music from the school disco - and snogging a girl called Rolo

Incidentely, only yesterday I heard 'Boy from New York City' by Darts - what a great band they were but you rarely hear them today.

 

[tdr1nka]

I was 7 in '76 and all my memories of that Summer are like sun bleached photographs. The clearest memory is of a news item showing how the crops
were being effected by the heat and compared a carrot from the previous year with one of that season and it was a quarter the size!!

 

[Milo]

wow 1976 thats a long time ago.

 

[Tim Bennet.]

Spent 3 months climbing in the Alps. The weather was horrendous. Had an epic on the Frendo Spur where our friends on the rope in front of us fell to their deaths in the middle of a raging blizzard.

Returned to the UK in Spetember to find it had been the best summer ever, where everyone had been climbing on the high mountain crags in their shorts all summer long.

It's amazing to remember how insolated you felt in Europe then. We hadn't seen a newspaper, called home, heard an English radio station (let alone the internet or satelite TV) all the time we were away. Now with Iridium phones there's nowhere on the planet where you are more than a few button pushes away from chatting with anyone at home.

 

[Dayvo]

wow 1976 thats a long time ago.

You wait, sonny Jim, so will 2008 be!

 

[dessertwarrior]

All I remember of 1976 was the fantastic summer that was ruined because I was taking my 'O' Levels. Once the exams were over it was the horrendous wait for the results

Still, I managed a pass in 6 subjects.

Don't even ask about my 'A' Levels!

 

[Dayvo]

All I remember of 1976 was the fantastic summer that was ruined because I was taking my 'O' Levels. Once the exams were over it was the horrendous wait for the results

Still, I managed a pass in 6 subjects.

Don't even ask about my 'A' Levels!

My summer wasn't ruined by my O-levels, it was more a case of the other way round!
Two out of ten passed!
My parents were in shock, and I just laughed!
I passed most later on at re-sits and sat and failed two out of three A-levels in 1978. Couldn't blame the weather, though, just apathy!

 

[Cathryn]

I was one. Hadn't even been on a bike.

 

[Dayvo]

I was one. Hadn't even been on a bike.

One what?
Yeah, yeah, I know . . .

 

[Night Train]

1976 - I remember being on holiday in Bournemouth with my parents, burning on the beach, running around the hotel swimming pool, slipping and landing backwards banging my head and knocking myself out. The light fizzled out like turning off an old tv. The next thing I knew was coming round and while being carried back to the hotel room by one of the other guests while someone went to find my folks.

 

[Dayvo]

I was one. Hadn't even been on a bike.

What? In 1976?
Hang on a sec!

92% male? No wonder there's NOTHING for gals in the current issue!!

Love to ride...check

17 years experience...check...well, I've had a bike for 20 odd years

10 hours per week in the saddle...do they have no families? Or chores?

Own at least one bike...own two!

Average spend £825...I clearly got a bargain

Age 42....am officially a young pup

Average income....am officially an impoverished, young, under represented pup

How's your maths?
Or were you born in a funny kind of parallel leap year?

 

[Yellow Fang]

I seem to remember it snowed on June 4th. I remember the endless news stories about the reservoirs drying up. I also remember trudging home up a hill in the hot weather.

 

[Tony Bell]

A great year! I was 18 that summer, and spent most of it bunking off from the grim factory in Birkenhead where I was doing my apprenticeship. The good weather started in early June and lasted until the end of August, I think. I remember in the middle of the heat wave there were a couple of days of cloudy weather, and we all thought that was it, but it came back even hotter.
Great memories of training in North Wales with the Wednesday 'Doleys' ride, and every race (I was riding mainly criteriums that year) seemed to have thousands of spectators around the course. Oh, and I won nine races that year as well...
I didn't know what the term Halcyon Days meant when I was 18, but I do now.