Shell Island Experiences

The night before the storm of 21 August 2004 was a wonderfully quiet summers evening, we put the kids to bed around 10:30 and my wife and I stood by the estuary with the full tide lapping at the shore and finished our wine. I distinctly remember mentioning how calm the weather was and it was how I always remember shell from my childhood holidays. Some time later we both curled up in our sleeping bags.

I woke the following morning around 4:15 due our neighbours shouting, as I listened and started to wake up more I could hear the wind. I noticed the bottom of our kitchen area was starting to flap in the wind and decided to get up and fasten it down. As I got outside the bedding area and into the main are in the tent I realised that the wind was gusting at some strength around the tent. I picked up the mallet and unzipped the tent, as I looked across to my left I saw why I'd heard shouting from my neighbours. They had two tents, both brand new, the ones with the frame that goes around the outside, like a small spider. One of the poles had snapped in the wind and they were frantically attempting to secure the tent.
I pegged down my loose pegs and went across to help. As I did I remember being buffeted around by the shear force of the wind and realising this wasn't a passing breeze. It was still dark and looking around our field you could see beams from torches as people were attempting to secure their tents. I held down what used to be the entrance porch to the tent and allowed some one to fasten down the other guy ropes and poles on the tent, every so often I would have to hold up the doorway to allow some one in or out of the tent to collect their clothing and put it into their car. Alarm bells should have started ringing at this point. I asked where the children were. "They're in the tent" I was told. "What this one?", "Yes". I suggested it may be worth waking the 9 kids up and moving them into the appropriate cars as the tent was going to last much longer. The children were woken carefully and moved into the warmth of the cars. They appeared totally bemused by the whole event. At this point my wife had joined us and was helping to capture clothing that was deciding to make a run for it across the field. After many more good blast of force eleventeen wind the tent frame gave up and simply snapped in front of us. Luckily no one was inside. That made their decision there and then to pack up and go home. This was around 4:45. We helped them pack and settle the kids who were having a wonderful time watching their parents attempt to run around and take down 3 tents in what seem like an incredibly strong gale.

I returned to our tent to re peg down the kitchen area. I went inside to check the state of the frame. The pole around the entrance was starting to shift, like it does in mud, so I picked it back up and placed in back securely. It moved back. My wife drove the car up to the front of the tent to attempt to break the wind over the front of the tent. For a while it had some affect, just until the wind decided to change direction, only a little but enough to push the polle by the door into a strange r shaped bend. I could cope with that. I'd just get a new pole from Port Madoc in the morning. I checked our children. They were both fast asleep in their beds and catching flies.

My wife decided to take a walk to the loo's across in the other field. The rain had started to come down hard at by now. These were the portaloo's. After deciding not to take the car as it was still doing a good job of protecting the tent she seemingly took a bearing and headed for 3 portaloo's. I'll never forget her face when she came back. Shear stunned amazement. "When I left here there were 3 loo's, when I got to the loo's there was only 2" The wind had picked one of the portaloos up and moved it up the field. You can imagine the inside !

Our tent was starting to change shape by now so we made the decision to wake our kids and get them into the car and pack up.
Not a moment to soon. The front right hand side of our frame tent, twice used collapsed and the r shaped pole became n shaped.

As we're all aware the process of packing a tent and its homely contents into a car is a careful one with much attention to detail. Not this time. The process became grab something, put it into the car and push it down .

By now many more people were awake and working thru the same process as we were. We stopped briefly as a voice shouted, "There's a tent moving there", we looked across to the North beach as we watched in total amazement as a large white conference tent lifted from the ground went vertical and then flew across the field and dropped onto the North Beach, and people ran from surrounding tents to attempt to re-collect the tent. Clothing did not seem necessary as women were running around in night gowns and men in boxer shorts to gather their belongings which had left abruptly

Around 7:30 we took our frame and dropped it into a skip at the top of the field, only to be stunned by the amount of other frames in the skip, along with canvases and other items that had just self exploded due to the immense wind conditions. There was a small 2 man ridge tent on the path back down to our tent that had ripped apart and was blowing in the wind simply held down by a few pegs.

We drove to the reception desk around 8:00 to pay up and start the long wet, soggy journey home. The amount of stunned, half asleep people queuing to pay up and leave was incredible. I walked in and paid up and jokingly mentioned to David that we'd had enough of the sun shine.

We drove up to Harlech to my parents to let them know we were leaving and then drove back down to Barmouth and to Stoke. As we drove down the road to Barmouth we looked across to Shell. The sun was out, the clouds had gone and the wind was a gently breeze.

The kids still remember their first ever experience of Shell Island as a nice one and didn't fully appreciate the immensity of the weather conditions we had encountered that evening. We soon found a replacement tent and intent to be back camping in 2005 at Shell Island. This time not in the same field. We lost our tent due to where we'd pitched. In the direct way of the tail end of Hurricane Andrew.

This was around about 1987/88, although I can't be exact as my memory isn't good. As per usual, my mom brought us from the Midlands in her beaten up old Sunbeam up through Dinas (clutch screaming all the way) to our usual summer holiday camping in Shell Island. We'd spent about six days there in miserable weather playing cards and jumping over the sand dunes near to where we'd camped. The night before we were due to come home, a storm hit the island. We were asleep in my Grandma's trusty (and crusty) old trailer tent when we were woken up to banging and howling from outside. Terrified (I was about seven at the time), my mom told me and my brother to stay in bed and she unzipped the compartment to find out what was going on. We heard her shout, "the tent's blowing away!" so me and my brother (only slightly older than me) ran out of bed and saw the front of our tent flapping away in gale force winds. In the pitch black, we were assigned to collect rocks to try and hold down the tent so we ran around the nearby area trying to find rocks big enough to hold the huge tent down. The wind was so bad you couldn't even open your eyes half the time but we trudged on. When we thought the tent was secure, we all zipped ourselves back up into the tent hoping it would hold. Suddenly there was a huge ripping sound down the side of the tent - the material had rubbed so hard against the huge camping stove we had that it completely ripped the side of the tent open. Seeing it as a lost cause, our mom took us out through the gale with our sleeping bags and huddled us into the car. She told us to try and get some sleep but the car shook back and forth so violently I was convinced it would turn over completely - worse yet because you couldn't see a thing outside the window, just pitch black as far as you could see. Eventually, the storm settled and we fell asleep for a few hours. When we awoke, we took a walk around the campsite to see the damage - the poor campers with the small tents had obviously come out of it worst, we saw tents completely upside down in a far worse state than our mammoth trailer tent. We grudgingly accepted that we should go home and started making preparations to leave, but about an hour later my grandparents turned up to the campsite. It was a glorious sunny day, the first we'd had all week, and somehow my Grandma convinced my mom to let us stay on another night in the torn up tent. We had a fantastic day, lazing on the beach and crab fishing on the harbour. My poor mom must have just wanted to get home but we didn't care, we wanted to stay on holiday! There were a few more times in my years at Shell Island that we ended up sleeping in the car but none quite so etched in my memory as that one.

Nicola S

UFO Sam

I was at Shell Island when the storms ripped down the coast. Can’t remember what year it was, but we were the only two tents standing. Sand dunes with lots of rocks - magic

There are a number of episodes which stick in my mind which may strike a chord with other campers, the first of which is a gentle tale

I lose track of time, but around 5 or six years ago we were camping on the estuary side towards the harbour. The fire was lit on the beach, sausages sizzling and everything perfect. This was about 10-00 or 11-00 PM

Liz had never really seen the sky before and we pointed out satellites and constellations.

I told her about shooting stars (we call them stratatons – long story) and told her we were at the tail end of shower. I explained that you simply had to have patience and as I did a ruddy great fireball shot across the sky – we thought it couldn’t get better

That is until I got UFO SAM out.

UFO SAM is a small oval shaped kite which rotates. It is made out of holographic Mylar. The trick is to get it flying and then shine torches on it. It flashes like mad in all sorts of colours. It’s very hard, from any distance to make out its location. Within minutes we heard “the look at that” and the campsite was alive with UFO spotters and we had another glass of wine and chuckled at this great plank.

What we didn’t expect was that the runway suddenly lit up on the base and there was a flurry of aircraft.

I’m sure it was an exercise, but in case it had anything to do with UFO SAM and our little prank – sorry

Richard M (50 and still a child at heart)