The Holiday Camp Chalets

　

　

　

This is a story about chalets at Groveland Bay Holiday camp. It caters for 2000 people and is run by Butterlins, founded by Sir Billy Butterlin. It has a large dining room and Greycoats.

One of the competitions is the Knobbly Big Head competitions and Glamorous headmasters contest, plus the filthy trouser race that takes place once a week, run by Steve Dustcart, one of the Greycoats.

The holiday camp is situated in delightful surroundings around Groveland Bay which is near Minelegs, A seaside town with its pleasure piers and "What the Butler ate", a hand " operated film showing a butler in pyjamas cooking a loaf of greenbread.

Now it’s back to the camp.

The holiday camp has chalets that contain triple bunk beds and a bathroom which has a toilet inside the bath so that if a person is caught short he can go to toilet whilst having a bath, saving him from having to get out of the bath to go to the toilet.

The first Butterlin Camp was at Eggness in Lincolnshire.

That was 1936.

The first chalets were very basic, without any roof at all. This meant that holiday campers had to put a blanket on top of their chalet in order to keep out the cold, and when it was raining a rooftop mackintosh

In those days the camp toilets were very primitive being just a pile of wood with a latrine underneath, and it was cold, indeed freezing. Because there weren’t any flushing facilities they did arf pong. To shut out the pong the toilets were covered in flowers.

Quite often these smelly ‘pile of wood toilets’ were the butt of jokes like the one about Pongville Holiday village said by various comedians.