In the now distant summer of 1980, my family and I went on holiday to Girvan. Camping. A voyage of discovery and countless family arguments.
Who knows why or how I got onto chatting about this on Twitter the other day. Nostalgia? Connection? Roots?
Memories are, of course, distorted by time and distance, prone to fading like old, yellowed newspapers. But my visits to Girvan remain vivid, over 40 years later.
We had day trips, gangs of kids packed on the bus, singing Rod Stewart songs and Scottish football anthems. The famous summer playschemes, organised by councils up and down the country; six weeks of disco dancing, table tennis, macramé lessons and the prized excursions to another seaside town not so far away.
Girvan seemed huge then, with its magnificent boating lake. Someone on the bus always got terrible sunburn. The volunteer mums – I don’t remember any dads going – went around trying to persuade unruly kids to wear sun cream, or at least their T-shirts. One boy who insisted on taps aff got sunstroke. That ended up being quite the drama, with an unplanned trip to the local hospital.
I’ve no idea how the camping holiday came about, other than Girvan was the birthplace of my paternal family. My dad was born there, and his family lived in a post-war prefab until they got a council house in Prestwick, around the corner from my mum.
We embarked on this holiday with my grandpa – a surprise, as he had declared himself to be a “milestone inspector” and would disappear for weeks at a time, before turning up unexpectedly with bags of fish he’d plundered from local rivers.
He had no time for the landowners’ rules, enticing the fish by rubbing their bellies. We had no freezer so, whenever Roy turned up, you would open the fridge to see a not-long-dead shoal of shiny brown trout staring at you. It was disconcerting.
Anyway, Roy drove one car, to transport me and my family, and my dad’s sister – Auntie Anne, who lived in Irvine – arrived in another, with her husband and my cousins. We must have had two tents, borrowed from somewhere. Apart from Roy, I don’t think anyone had slept under the stars in their life. Except maybe my dad, inadvertently, whilst inebriated.
‘The past is a foreign country’
“The past is a foreign country,” wrote LP Hartley in The Go-Between. “They do things differently there.” They certainly put tents up differently. It was carnage, and the first of many familial rows ensued.
It rained furiously: the kind of horizontal rain that seeped under the tent. We were absolutely soaked. None of us had suitable outdoor clothing, except possibly Roy, who came into his own in the wilds.
I got myself stuck up a cliff and had to be recued by my big cousin. Then I got stung by a jellyfish. I acutely remember the incessant, prickly sting and being told to keep my foot in seawater.
I continue to pass through Girvan regularly on my travels. Home to one of Ayrshire’s best sandy beaches, it still has that boating lake, although it’s not quite as huge as I remember.
If I have time, I like to pause and sit at the edge of the sea, breathing in the stunning panorama of Ailsa Craig, Arran and the Mull of Kintyre. This is one of my favourite views in the world. I strongly suggest you try it sometime. If you’re lucky, you might just spot a passing seal.
My mum still lives in Ayrshire and, if I travel home from Belfast on the ferry, I pass Girvan on the way up the windy coast road. We took the kids down to Girvan when they were wee, to play air hockey and eat chips and proper ice cream.
The town still has an amusement arcade and those traditional shops, selling seashell ornaments and buckets and spades. It has a superb gelateria, though the traditional Italian cafe I loved – The Minerva – has sadly gone. It had a jukebox, as all good cafes did back then. I have, however, been assured that the fish and chip shop is still one of Ayrshire’s best.
Instilling a love of the wild
I didn’t go on another camping holiday until I was a teenager, when fishing for brown trout in the abundant Ayrshire lochs became one of my favourite pastimes. A gang of us would go together, to Loch Doon, or sometimes further afield to Loch Awe or Loch Earn in Perthshire. Looking back, we had such freedom. We also learned about the land and its history.
I never really thought I was an outdoorsy person, more of a city gal, but who knows?
My own kids first went camping, in France, when they were barely a year old. Now, as teenagers, have sustained their love of the outdoors. They love hiking and wild beaches and watching the sunset.
I never really thought I was an outdoorsy person, more of a city gal, but who knows? Maybe I inherited more of my Girvan grandpa Roy’s roving streak and love of the wild than I realised.
Donna McLean is originally from Ayrshire and is a mum of twins, writer and activist