British 90s nostalgia and shite

My parents were poor and couldn't afford expensive holidays. So instead of cruises or round-the-world trips, we'd go to a caravan park in Wales instead.

They couldn’t even afford Butlin’s, so the holiday camp my family dragged me to was one called Trecco Bay. It was essentially a poor man's Butlins, and that's saying something.

I want to make jokes like Trecco Bay being more like a concentration camp than a holiday camp, but I can't because honestly, it was a good place for a holiday. I only have happy memories of it. Well, mostly happy memories.

I should warn you that this post mainly consists of my specific memories of Trecco Bay in the 1990s, so if you didn’t go to Trecco Bay in the 1990s then you should probably read something else. In fact, you should probably read something else even if you did go to Trecco Bay in the 1990s, like a microwave manual or Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet, because honestly, anything’s better than these posts that I write.

The caravan

Trecco Bay only had caravans. There was none of that fancy chalet shit like at Butlin’s. There were just acres and acres of caravans, all placed in a grid layout like gravestones in a war cemetery. If you didn’t want to stay in a caravan then Trecco Bay was probably not the place for you.

I guess the reason there were so many caravans was that it was cheaper to buy a load of caravans than to build hotel rooms. I bet Billy Butlin wished he thought of that idea when he was building his holiday camps.

The wheels were removed from the caravans and big concrete bricks supported the caravans off the ground. This meant that to get into the caravan, you had to climb metal steps. These steps always seemed dangerous to me as a kid for some reason. I guess I imagined my leg getting stuck in them, or somehow falling through them to the other side. I don't know what it was. But I treated those steps with the caution and respect they deserved.

The caravans looked small on the outside but surprisingly big on the inside. It was like walking into a Tardis. The caravan we stayed in had three bedrooms and enough beds for the six of us, which is astonishing really. I wouldn't have minded if that was my actual house.

Here are some things you can do in the caravan:

• Do a 10.000-piece jigsaw puzzle
• Fall asleep on the sofa during the middle of the day
• Hide in one of the cupboards as a hilarious joke to make your parents think you've gone missing or been kidnapped. Only come out when a police helicopter has been called.
• Do an enormous poo and block up the caravan's only toilet

The beach

One of the main draws of the caravan holiday was the beach. But the beach was a cold, cruel place, even in summer. It was usually windy and we all had to wear coats, even in July. We went there every day while we were on holiday simply because we had nothing better to do.

All that said though, we still had a great time. It's a testament to the hardiness of children that we still managed to have fun on the beach.

In the photo below we're not wearing coats, which contradicts what I said earlier, so imagine we are wearing coats:

Going into the sea was out of the question because you'd get frostbite in less than a minute. So here are some things we did at the beach:

• Make sandcastles
• Collect rocks and shells
• Try to find a crab, while also terrified because if you did find one, it might pinch you
• Fling seaweed at each other with a stick
• Throw said stick at a feral dog
• Climb up some rocks to escape said feral dog
• Stay on said rocks until nightfall, when the dog finally goes away, and then spend the rest of the night stumbling around the beach in the dark and swearing, unable to find the way back up again

When you get back to the caravan, it is imperative that one or both of your parents say, "We've brought half the beach back with us!" Parents have to say this for some reason.

Rain

It rains a lot in Wales. This means lots of the photos from our Trecco Bay holidays look like this:

Look at me brother. He's so 90s in this photo that even the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was taking fashion advice from him.

Food

Our diet for the week consisted of:

• Satsumas (the only fruit or vegetables we ate on our entire holiday)
• Chips
• Lollipops
• Jammie Dodgers
• Variety pack cereals

The water park

The water park at Trecco Bay wasn't as good as the one at Butlins but then again, nothing at Trecco Bay was.

But they did have waterslides. Waterslides were great. So great that I planned to have one installed in my house when I grew up, which is something I haven't got around to yet, unfortunately.

Every time I went down the water slide, I hoped it would send me to a parallel universe where I would have a different family. But it never worked. Probably only the slides at Butlins did that.

The holiday park shop

Every holiday park had a small shop. They sold sold things like:

• Tea
• Beano Comic Libraries

• Variety pack cereals

Entertainment

One of the best things about holiday camps was the entertainment at night. Trecco Bay had an entertainment hall and it smelled of cigarette smoke and alcohol, which is not surprising because most adults were smoking and drinking.

There were games for children. I would usually win just on account of being older than everyone else. Even though the prize was always just a lollipop, that wouldn't stop me from winning over and over. You would I would have let the smaller kids win once or twice but no.

The DJ, if there ever was a DJ because I don't remember ever seeing one, but there must have been, played the following songs:

• Macarena
• Birdie Dance
• Agadoo
• Hokey Cokey
• Do the Conga
• Wig Wam Bam
• Timewarp
• The Rivers of Babylon
• Whizzy World
• The Birdie Song

Here all are at end of the night. My brother and I are wielding cans of silly string like mini anarchists.

My sister won the weekly Miss Trecco Bay competition, by the way. The prize was a free trip to go back four months later so she would take part in the final. Though whether this qualifies as a prize is debatable. It's more of punishment than anything. So four months later, we all had the pleasure/obligation of going back for the final. Which she didn't win.

Karaoke

It was at Trecco Bay that I sang an awful rendition of Whigfield's Saturday Night:

That poor entertainer. She's doing her best to keep things light and fun but she can't do anything to improve my terrible singing, or to change my Brummie accent for that matter.

That day, my dreams of being a cabaret singer died.

Though i think everyone died inside that night.

Except I went back the next day and sang not one, not two, but three Aladdin songs back to back for a talent contest. My dad even filmed it

How is that possible? In what universe does a Brummie kid from Birmingham go to Wales and sing not one, not two, but three Aladdin songs back to back, to a live audience? I'll tell you what universe: it's this universe.

Why would the entertainers let such an atrocity continue? Surely someone from Trecco Bay should have stepped in after the first Aladdin song, or even the second Aladdin song, taken my mike and said, "Let's give a big round of applause to Paul!" and then got me off the stage? But no. They let it continue. I can only guess that the rest of the entertainment at Trecco Bay was so appalling and dull that my own singing was a welcome break in comparison.

Against all logic and reason, I was sure I was going to win the talent content. To be fair, I did know all the lyrics of three Aladdin songs, which is quite impressive.

But then they announced that someone else won instead. I was so distraught that cried into my mom's chest. "I should have won," I blurted out between sobs.

Conclusion

Trecco Bay still exists somehow so maybe I'll go back there one day. Then again, maybe I won't.