Whitesands

In the summer of 1959 Richard and I flew out to Mombasa to a new house, the third house we'd had in Cliff Avenue and the one from which my father would retire in 1961. At first it was a disappointment - well, anything would be after the last time we'd been out, in 1957, when our parents lived at the Hoey House, right on the beach at Nyali, see post here - but instead we found old friends and spent our holiday in the company of a wonderful group of young people.

For reasons best known to her, and even though Richard and I were very happy, my mother decided that the family should get away together, so she booked a rondavel at Whitesands Hotel to the north of Mombasa which, like the Hoey house, was right on the beach.

The short break was a disaster. As my mother wrote in her Life of my father, "I think it was on these holidays that we went up to Whitesands for a weekend so as to be right on the beach and swim and paddle as much as we liked. Dad did this very grudgingly as he didn't like the beach, never bathed, and couldn't understand how we liked sand in our food." As far as Richard and I were concerned, while we enjoyed the beach we would probably have preferred to the back in Mombasa with our friends. And I know my mother was very unhappy.

The hotel still exists today, but much changed from the simple place we remember - a link to today's Sorova Whitesands Hotel is here.