|
Location: Berkshire
Joined: Jan 2008
Posts: 2
|
|
Just wanted to say thanks for your posting duboing - found this surfing Google after seeing the crosby beach statues for the first time on TV tonight (Coast).
Your pictures bring back warm memories having spent summer holidays at Crosby sands as a child, staying with my dear grandparents living on Sudbury Road, now long deceased. I'm going back 35 years.
The sands made a great playground and I do recall them being soft underfoot, and plenty of 'trophy' to be found washed in with each tide. I stayed just south of the Baths which were a large square building back then (I see on Google Earth they are all modern now). Busy shipping lane, always something to see passing.
What a great space to live local to! I have nothing like this where I live. Maybe I can dig out an old photo of the sands back then.
I'm amazed to read your text of banned bathing on the sands. My grandmother would swim every morning here and had done all her life at Sudbury, even during the ice of winter. She said the baths were not real swimming and I'd join her many mornings amongst our friends the jelly fish (and even a little wash back from the open sewer!) Blimey, memories. And it was all good.
I'm guessing the sea defence wall and prom walk was relatively new when I was a boy. I recall the field area between Holden Road/Westward View and the beach was flat green grass back then. I'd walk across flat green to the promenade defense wall. But when last visiting, fifteen years ago, I found sand dunes had reclaimed that area, the flat green field gone, nature moving back.
I can well believe Flipper's tale about the 7 year old girl stuck in quick-sand around the sewer pipe. Being a little misbehaved I remember running along that pipe as a young boy (much to my grandfathers torment calling me back in vain) and I fully understood that should I fall into the discoloured sludge surrounding the pipe then I might never surface. A lot of raw sewerage ran down that pipe back then and left a scarey looking deep substance surrounding the entire length of the pipe.
Out in the sands a VW Beetle roof was just visible at low tide, a daring drive that fell victim to the incoming tide. I remember it was visible for a few years, and a boat mast too at low tide.
Anyway - your posting and photos brought back some good memories so I thought I should write - thanks. People living around this spot are lucky - what a great back yard. I can only wonder what my Nan would have made of all the naked statues as her bathing partners! I must revisit, if only to see these amazing statues for real.