Calshot

A towering cigarette, pumping out large clouds of smoke, was how my sister and I knew we were almost there. Our naïve minds had no concept of what an oil-fired power station was or looked like. We just knew the slender chimney symbolised the beginning of fun and fresh air, like a warden welcoming us and watching over as we played. Ironic really. The Fawley Power Station is currently being demolished and although still standing the tower’s days are numbered. I would have liked to drive by it once last time, reliving the childlike excitement of a holiday starting.

We’d pull up onto the campsite, our grandparents’ beaming faces and their beloved caravan Annie, already waiting for us. Calshot, or as nine-year-old me would call it, Cowshot, is a coastal village in Hampshire. The campsite sits on a narrow spit of land which protrudes into the Solent Strait. It is a simple field adjoining the shingle beach which bordered the whole spit. There were groynes made of short wooden stumps, the perfect place to practice my tightrope walking. Behind the beach huts of teal, cyan, and cobalt, there was a slow running stream. We’d all stand on the bridge, newly found twigs in hand, ready for an exhilarating game of Poohsticks.

We ran around barefoot, with windswept hair and a thin layer of sea salt coating our bare skin. We slept in cosy bunk beds, and a washing up bowl in the bottom of the shower filled with warm water and a flannel was how we bathed. From the beach we would wave at the cruise ships as they headed towards Southampton. Our grandparents nurtured all of our innocent and fantastical whims without question. My sister wrote letters to the ‘Caravan Fairy’, which always received a beautifully handwritten response. All manner of pebbles and dried-out pieces of seaweed we foraged from the beach were precious, and magical in some way or another.

The wind was incessant, and sometimes it would rain, but that never seemed to bother us. The caravan was a treasure trove of craft projects: colouring, cross-stitch, knitting. There was an activity centre on the site, which housed a climbing wall and a dry ski slope. We were too young to have a go, but just watching people pull themselves up the walls or hurl themselves down the slopes was more than enough excitement for one afternoon. There was also a velodrome, and for some reason there was nothing more thrilling to my sister and I than climbing the stairs to the viewing gallery and playing spectator in the empty arena.

At low tide a smaller spit would appear, extending from the beach. A narrow, pebbled path that led out to sea. Its sudden materialisation was always the highlight of my weekends at Calshot. The sea would part and I would scamper along the stones and shells towards the very end. Realistically this spit was likely only 100 metres long, but to me, I had journeyed far out to the centre of the ocean. I was at the threshold between land and sea. Maybe mermaids would come and speak to me. They would tell me all about their underwater kingdoms and I would show them the shells I had collected that day, stuffed in sandy pockets, and let them know what my Grampsie would be cooking for dinner.

The campsite is still there, and other than the membership fee, there is nothing physically stopping me from staying there again. Undoubtedly, the origins of my current love for campervanning were conceived at Calshot and the long blustery days I spent roaming along the beach there. Yet, there is something that stops me from returning. These memories are so cherished. I am fearful that adult me, with my stresses and inhibitions, will not find quite the same wild abandon. Recollections of Calshot then becoming shrouded by the regret of forgotten childhood innocence. So, for now at least, I stay away, remembering it through the eyes of the untroubled and adventurous child I was. Not feral, but free.