Three young women are photographed, mid-laughter, on a beach. It’s a sunny day in the early 1980s. Their arms are wrapped around one another. They’re snacking on potato chips, stretching out on a plaid picnic blanket after a dip in the English Channel.
“Looking at the photograph, it really epitomizes who we are as sisters,” Pamela Cook tells CNN Travel today. “Us three. Laughing like that. It’s a photo I held onto for the longest time.”
Cook spent years telling her two sisters, Tracey Waygood and Elaine McCartney, that they should recreate the picture, which was taken on Castle Beach in Cornwall, in the southwest of England, sometime around 1980.
The three sisters remain close and still visit Castle Beach together, spending long days together laughing, swimming and chatting.
Waygood and McCartney always agreed that Cook was right, it would be fun, and it felt achievable — they knew exactly where the photo was taken, after all.
They just never quite got round to it, until last summer that is, when the three sisters finally gathered their supplies — bikinis, beach blanket and the prerequisite snack packet — to recreate the shot.
The three women, who are now in their late 60s and early 70s, figured that even though it was an overcast day, there was no time like the present.
This feeling was heightened by the fact McCartney was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago.
“We know that time is precious, so we make the most of it,” says Waygood. “We wanted to make sure we did it. It was really important to us.”
Return to Castle Beach
Castle Beach is in the coastal town of Falmouth. The three sisters grew up in the area and spent their summers on the beach, known for its rock pools, along with their gang of siblings.
“It was always a big group of us,” recalls Waygood. “We’re a large family, and then there were always cousins and other friends, and there would always be a good crowd on the beach.”
The family never went abroad on vacation.
“Six siblings. Mum and dad working class. That was our holiday,” says Cook.
But Cook, Waygood and McCartney never fantasized about Spanish beaches. Never felt like they were missing out on trips to France. Not with Cornwall’s incredible coastal beauty on their doorstep, and their large, loving family in tow.
“We never looked for anything else,” says Cook.
Today, McCartney still lives about 15 minutes drive from Castle Beach, while Cook and Waygood live a couple hours away. Two other siblings live in Canada, but the family stay close via video calls and social media.
When Cook, McCartney and Waygood mentioned their plans to recreate the 1980s beach photo, their loved ones didn’t think too much about it. The trio often do something fun and “a little crazy” when they get together — every Christmas, for example, the sisters record themselves singing along to a favorite Christmas song and send the resulting chaos to their loved ones (“No wine is involved,” jokes Tracey)
Upon arriving at Castle Beach on the day of the recreated photo, the sisters prioritized having a dip in the sea first. They noted the overcast weather and wanted to make sure they enjoyed an icy, but invigorating plunge. It was cold, but it was great fun.
Back on shore, the sisters went about setting up the recreated photo. Right away, they realized their accuracy was going to be slightly off, but they weren’t discouraged.
“I didn’t get the memo about wearing the same color bikini,” says Cook, laughing. “I don’t have a blue bikini.”
And although the coastline has shifted over the years, the women were able to easily pinpoint the exact spot where their original picture was taken.
“The beach cafe that used to be there got washed away in one of the storms, so it’s been relocated and moved along slightly, but we wanted to sit in exactly the same place, because the railings were still there,” says Waygood.
The sisters laid down their plaid beach blanket — not the same one from the 1980s, but another that Waygood found in her closet.
Next step: finding a photographer. The sisters had assumed this would be easy, but glancing around the beach, there were no obvious contenders.
“Because the weather was changing, and it had started to rain, and it was a little bit cool, there weren’t actually a lot of people on the beach,” recalls Waygood. “So I said to Pam, ‘Why don’t we ask somebody from the cafe?’”
While the beach cafe featured in the 1980s shot is long gone, there’s a present-day cafe on Castle Beach. The aptly named Castle Beach Cafe is a seasonal kiosk selling English seaside must-haves such as hot drinks, sausage rolls and chocolate brownies.
Cook lined up at the kiosk and, rather than placing an order for a hot chocolate, she asked the woman behind the counter if she’d help them recreate an old photograph. Cook showed her the 1980s shot on her phone for reference.
The woman behind the counter, college student Jess Loydell, immediately jumped to attention, delighted at the prospect of helping with this photographic quest.
Loydell studied the original photo carefully, and then directed the women, making sure McCartney’s arms were wrapped around her sisters in the same way, that the packet was being clutched just so.
But when it came to their smiles, the sisters didn’t need much direction — capturing the joy of the original photo came naturally.
The goal, says Cook, had always been to “make it fun.”
“I don’t know what we were laughing about when the photo, the original photograph, was taken, but we were still laughing when the last one was taken,” she says.
Cook, Waygood and McCartney were thrilled with the resulting shot. They thanked Loydell, who returned to the Castle Beach Cafe. The sisters spent a bit longer lying on the beach, reminiscing about good times together, making new memories.
Positive reaction
When they returned to their respective homes, the sisters shared the photograph on Facebook, much to the delight of their friends and family.
“Our siblings love it. Absolutely so proud sharing it,” says Waygood. “Our nephews and nieces in Canada were sharing it, ‘These are, these are our crazy aunties in England.’”
Staff at Castle Beach Cafe reached out and asked if they could post the shot to their own social media pages. The sisters happily agreed. Then suddenly, it wasn’t just family and friends weighing in, as the recreated photo spread across the internet and was picked up by local news outlets.
The sisters were inundated with positive feedback, with many people suggesting they’d been inspired to recreate a favorite photo. Others tagged their sisters, posting heart emojis.
“The comments have been just inspiring for us,” says Cook.
And while interspersed among the positivity were the inevitable naysayers, Cook, Waygood and McCartney shrugged off any negativity.
“That’s just social media,” says Cook. “But we are so comfortable in our skins. We just didn’t worry about us going on the beach at our ages in our bikinis.”
Celebrating sisterhood
Waygood, Cook and McCartney never took the photograph in a quest for fame or in the hope that people across the world might see it on their newsfeeds and hit like (“I didn’t even brush my hair,” says Waygood, laughing).
The trio say they did it for themselves, to celebrate their sisterhood, their enduring relationship, the joy of a day together on the beach.
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes them have such a close sisterly relationship, says Waygood and Cook.
It feels “such a natural thing,” as Cook puts it, to have a relationship defined by “a lot of fun, a lot of laughs.”
“It’s not until another person says, ‘You’re so lucky to have your closeness and have each other,’” says Waygood.
Still, in recent years, McCartney’s dementia has made the sisters appreciate their bond in a new light. Their relationship is still defined by levity and joy. But they’re more aware that nothing is forever.
And that’s one of the reasons they’re so happy to have the two photos. So that the feeling of joy remains, no matter what happens in the future.
“We just wanted to capture that moment,” says Cook.
“Capture that moment. For us,” adds Waygood. “And we did it, and it’s wonderful. We’ve got us. We’ve got the three of us on the beach smiling.”
If others enjoy seeing the two pictures, or get inspired, that’s just an unexpected, heartwarming bonus for the sisters.
Waygood’s advice for anyone hoping to follow in their footsteps and recreate a favorite photo is “don’t wait for perfection, just get out and do it.”
“Tomorrow might not be there,” she says.
As for Cook, she now has the two shots framed in her home. They always make her smile.
“What I loved about it when I saw the two photographs, was that even though it wasn’t accurate, it wasn’t perfect — I’d captured what I wanted to capture, and that was the three of us being who we are,” says Cook.