Anne B wrote:

I well remember 1955.

We were packed off to a seaside cottage for the entire duration of the school
holidays because there was a lot of poliomyelitis about, and it was before
the vaccine was developed against it. My parents reckoned we would be safer
out of the town.

It was the first time we experienced severe sunburn. We spent a couple of
days in a darkened room feeling utterly miserable, and then several more days
itching as the burnt skin peeled off.

Apart from that we spent a fair proportion of the summer falling off rocks
and out of boats and kayaks into the sea. Magic!

I have no particular memories of the weather in 1959, however. That summer I
dislocated my knee falling down a cliff, and I spent quite a lot of time
afterwards just standing in the sea, because the cold water numbed the pain.

Anne


A bit late in responding but I remember summer 1955 very well. I lived in Largs
in North Ayrshire then and that was the only time that I ever saw the peat
moorland above the town burning. It was the dried out peat in the ground that
was burning, not vegetation on the top. A stunningly hot and sunny summer in
that neck of the woods.

--
Norman Lynagh
Tideswell, Derbyshire
303m a.s.l.
http://peakdistrictweather.org