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| A distinctly "non-urban" Youth Hostel. Black Sail in Cumbria |
In my mid-teens I toured Britain, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, sometimes by bike, sometimes by cocking my thumb. I stayed in Youth Hostels, sleeping in communal dormitories, often cooking my own evening meal. Almost always sausages, after a kindly woman suggested I covered the frying pan with a plate, intensifying the flavour.
Youth Hostels were cheap and “healthy”. I had expected remote places, washing in cold water with industrial soap. In fact many hostels were urban, the most paradoxical being Hoxton, then a slum in east London.
The most exotic was in the very centre of Winchester, a converted water mill with the mill-race still active, constricting the whole of the river into a narrow stone-lined gully where it roared through at speed. For entertainment someone had dangled the seat of a wooden kitchen chair on which it was possible to “surf” for a few breathless moments before tumbling into the river and being drawn into calmer water downstream.
I had to have a go. Put on my cozzie, surfed for two seconds, fell into the water and allowed myself to drift rather further than I should. Returned to the hostel through city streets, barefooted, under-clothed and drenched.
Once, in a Midlands village hostel I was the only resident. Hostel users were expected to perform some domestic task during their stay. I swept the area round my bed, leaving acres of dusty floor untouched. That was only fair, I told myself.
These days a hotel room without an en suite loo would be unthinkable. Then, one shuffled quietly out of the dormitory, down a corridor, even downstairs.
At one hostel two US girls at breakfast spread marmalade on their fried bacon. Years later I discovered that the USA was even more curious than that.
I, too, Youth Hostelled in my youth, RR. I well remember that Winchester one with the chair dangling over the stream, but did not attempt your plunge.
ReplyDeleteI was touring Wiltshire/Berkshire taking in the Ridgeway path (it rained heavily all day as I navigated the slippery chalk mud) sleepng that night in the Marlborough YH.
Winchester was my last night after touring Salisbury Plain and I will always remember my next day from there, cycling (with panniers) the 100 miles home to Maidstone, Kent.
That ride along the 40 mile Ridgeway Path engraved itself on my memory and since then I have ridden it by trail motorcycle on day rides from Kent many times. One truly feels liberated up there on the Berkshire/Wiltshire Downs with vast skies and skylarks calling.
Avus: It's astonishing that you remember the dangling chair seat at Winchester; that must have been in the very early fifties. There used to be a rule with the YHA that you couldn't use the hostels alone if you were younger than 13 (I think). I could hardly wait and almost immediately after that birthday (in 1948), with a friend of the same age, I did what seemed at the time to be a long hard grind to Kendal on the southern fringe of the Lake District. A check with the mileage, now, reveals this only to be 66 miles; however it did include the lengthy ascent of Buckhaw Brow out of Settle
DeleteThe hardest day's cycling I can remember is from Ellerby, a village in north Yorkshire, to York (52 miles - diagonally across the Goathland Moors) to pick up a friend waiting outside the cathedral. Thereafter from York to Bridlington (44.6 miles). The first stage - high rolling moorland - was demanding but I was reasonably fresh. But the second stage was into heavy rain and a hard wind blowing west from the North Sea. Then there was the small matter of searching for the Bridlington YH without any kind of detailed map. Rain-driven deserted streets. Easily another half-hour if not more. What added to the exhaustion was the fact that York to Bridlington is entirely flat with no downhill respites.
Looking up old photos I see it was 1956 when I did that ride. I was 17 and the "Winchester Chair" was still there (or had been replaced).
DeleteI agree with Sir Hugh's comments, below.
Alas YHA has changed much. Many hostels have been closed. Invariably one finds that they have been fully booked by large groups well in advance. On my own more recent multi week walks in England and Wales I have often been rebuffed by this situation. Some hostels allow camping in their gardens. Arriving tired and weary after a sixteen mile day at a YHA in Wales I found it was fully booked by a group of school children and they wouldn't even let me camp in the grounds in case I was some kind of paedophile. On top of all that the cost has increased to equate more or less to what one pays for a modest b and b and with less comfort. Another irritating feature is that many don't open until 5:00 pm and if there is nobody to ask you have to wait around to find out if they have a place available. It is all a long way from providing for the spontaneous impecunious weary traveller who turns up without having booked.
ReplyDeleteOne of my more endearing memories is staying at Torridon YHA in Scotland with Gimmer who comments here. Our duty task was to clean the kitchen. They had a wall mounted tin opener whose complexity rivalled instruments on the Mars lander. Gimmer removed it from the wall and stripped it down into its component pieces for a thorough clean as he grumbled at the sloth of erstwhile visitors who had failed to properly maintain this treasure. I don't think he got quite as far as re-plating it with electrolysis, but it kept him well occupied while I cleaned the floor and work surfaces.
Sir Hugh: It is, after all, the YOUTH Hostels Association. Also, the passage of time must have involved a good deal of investment since many of hostels I stayed at during the fifties would no longer be legal as places of mass accommodation. And I suspect it is group bookings that keeps them going; visits like yours represent be a budgetary nightmare.
DeleteI fear my old bones are not suitable for such Spartan residences. Apart from anything else I doubt the quality of their wine lists.
Unfortunately like many others the Winchester YHA is closed but now owned by the National Trust and its shop sells their milled flour. The last time I was there the YHA visitors books were on display and it was interesting to read about the trips people made.
ReplyDeleteSome YHA's now sell meals plus beer and wine.
Dave: Many Hostels offered meals in my day and I much preferred eating someone else's preparation, however unimaginative.
DeleteI'm not surprised the YHA had to sell on the Winchester mill; most of the contents(shafts and wheels) were more charming than useful.
Beer with a YHA dinner? What about Men sana in corpore sano.?