Memories left by people visiting the Maritime Festival 8th & 9th Sept 2007
By Laura Matthews
"Two weeks holiday in Great Yarmouth every year at the Norfolk Hotel, Marine Parade, 1935-1939, wonderful!!"
"Very good memories of annual family holidays camping at Broad Farm near Oulton Broad in the 1970s and 1980s. We visited the pier each year to see the shows, the Krankie's and Little and Large to name a few. I'll always remember the 10p fun fair and eating pie and peas in cracked dishes from a yellow cabin on the sea front."
"One broken net strand was called a sprunt and if there were three it was called a crow's foot."
"At midnight, on New Years Eve, along the South Quay the ships blew their horns to welcome in the New Year and see out the old."
"Taking and empty bag to the fish Warf and saying Mr Folices sent me, and they would fill my bag with herring."
"I met my partner in 1991 at the Garibaldi Disco and we married in 2007."
"Having afternoon tea in Palmers and eating chips on Yarmouth Market in the 1960s as a child."
"I remember sitting in my pram in Cobholm waving a Union Jack flag. My mum tells me it was the coronation of Elizabeth II. I remember my dad letting me have the last Scroby boat trip of the day to see the seals. He worked on the boat trips from Yarmouth Beach. I also remember one of the floods of the 1950s, wading in my wellies, with water inside them, along Southtown Station, holding my brothers hand, petrified."
"The Great Yarmouth and Gorleston Swimming pools, both were sea water, open air pools. The Great Yarmouth one was 100 yards by 25 yards and Gorleston's was 50 yards by 16 yards. Both had a full set of diving boards: 1m & 3m (fixed spring) and one 5m high. The first swim of the season the water temperature was 49 degrees Fahrenheit."
"I remember the fishing season, the Skater Skades show, the floods and Neville Bishop at the Marina."
"Herring boats six abreast across the river, lots and lots of herring and ladies gutting them straight from the boat."
"Walking to school along Blackwall Beach in 1955 in the early morning watching the drifters put to sea. A never ending line one after the other."
"I can remember going to the Marina Centre when it first opened in the 1980s, my brother thought the wave machine was very exciting."
"When the fisher girls came to Yarmouth we used to be taken down to the watch them gutting. If people had them lodging in their houses they used to wrap the table legs in cloth."
"When a jelly fish was caught in the net it used to make us beatsters (net menders) sneeze."
"Dancing at Goode's Hotel on the front and the Wellington Pier. Also Friday nights at the Little Theatre watching future stars like Barry Foster and Ruth Kettlewell."
"Going for rides on the tubs and snails at Joy land, having come across form Gorleston on the ferry."
"Sleeping through the great flood in 1953, at 127 Havelock Road."
"I remember as a child visiting the funfair and sliding sown the bumpy slide in a 'doormat'. I was wearing shorts and it prickled my legs."