60 Years On And I Still Love It!

A Memory of Talacre.

My Auntie May Howard and her husband Frank, from St. Helens, had a wooden holiday bungalow she called Homestead in Dee Avenue Talacre - it was definitely 1961 onwards and possibly just before that and the community centre stands there now. The bungalow next door was called Iona. We first went there as a family in 1961 when I was 13 and I loved it from the word go - to the amazement of the family, and I've loved it ever since.
Like has been mentioned, there were gas mantles and a chemical toilet but I could lie in bed and watch people go up the lane to the old bakery (oh that smell of pies - nothing like it since) in the dunes through the gaps in the dry stone wall which was covered in rambling roses. We spent all day in the sun at the sand dunes having competitions to see who could run and jump off the furthest and there was a man who rented out bikes just at the junction where the post office used to be. There was also a lady who lived on Station Road and sold knitting stuff from her house - I started something new every time and never finished it - and the local taxi driver was a rather dour man with a limp.
The shop at the side of the cut-through path that now sells beach stuff and plants, I remember as being like the café in Happy Days - you could get anything there from bread to a screwdriver and there were tables with checked cloths and the wonderful juke box - I can never hear Walking Back to Happiness, You Don't Know or Halfway to Paradise without thinking of Talacre. We met a group of boys from the Wirral in there, one was Des and one was Ron and I was quite put out that they fancied someone else!
I go back regularly (my granddaughters now love it as much as me) and will be there at the end of September 2018 - just me and my dog looking forward to walking on the beach. As soon as I turn into Station Road my heart is happy. Wish I could live there!

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