Wide Sea Hotel, Downderry

I stayed at the Wide Sea with my parents from 1957 to 1964, last week in August and first in September. We used to meet up with the same people each year: Judy Clemens and parents Jack and Pat, Alastair and Robin Smith and parents Bob and Sheila, Peter Laing, Jenny Jones, Susan Harvey, Liz Francis and her parents Jean and Roy, The Impey family (related to Margaret Elliott I think),
another teenager who owned a Merlin Rocket sailing boat (local helicopter alerted for us once). Wonderful memories. And the girl I first fell in love with ("I was only 16, to young to know) but thank you JC. Have loads of photographs. Last timeI went the hotel was a residential home for the elderly. peterbaker61@gmail,.com

What a wonderful memory for names! Wide Sea seemed to specially attract people that became friends and returned each year, as you say. My parents Phyl and Reg Cox became friends with Joan and Bob Hartnoll from Harlow and their daughter Gill and Joan's mother Lady Hastineau - Bob called her - though I never did know if she was really titled. My father's relationship with the Hartnolls became life changing years later when all of them moved home and work to Cornwall. Bob bought the large house with the daffodils, Far Horizon, along nearer Seaton There was the Sparrow family too. And a BBC producer well known at the time whose name escapes me. There was never much to do except it seemed to be a routine to motor to Looe or Polperro for morning coffee each day. Bob had a black Bentley R-Type he used for holidays. We only had a Rover!
The Dispense Bar just inside the reception door was the centre of evening activity, dispensing G & T's for the men and Gin & It's for the ladies. Probably lemonade for me. I don't think Coke had arrived. And Bensons! In those days almost everyone were smokers. Dad had (fatally) progressed to cigars that he thought would be healthier!
Wide Sea created a memorable impression on me. We stayed three years in a row from 1958 I think. A few years ago I was in the area and went back to relive the memory and found it, like you, tired, damp-looking and dowdy, a cheerless-looking residential home I'd never want to be shut away in despite he view. Miss Eliot would have never let It get like that. It had lost its charm.

I was at the "Inn on the Shore" at Downderry today - this is the new incarnation of the Wide Sea Hotel. It is a proper inn, with rooms to stay in and a good menu - liquid and otherwise. Originally I am from S Wales but now live nearby in Liskeard. My brother became a near celebrity in our hometown when he went, as a student, in 1962, to Downderry to be a seasonal summer worker at the Wide Sea Hotel. Exotic foreign travel in those days since most never left the 'big mam' as S Wales was called.