Those Were the Days!
If you think you’ve had a hard time trudging through the snow in the last week or two, an article in The Sentinel recalls tougher times:
Gladys Maitland, another YHA enthusiast of a previous generation, also remembers how they were undeterred by snowstorms more than 50 years ago.
“We never worried about a bit of snow,” she says. “We got through to Hartington hostel on our bikes when snowdrifts were up to the roofs of cottages.”
Of course you’d be able to thaw out once you reached the hostel, well, probably…
I myself visited Dimmingsdale youth hostel, near Cheadle, in the 1950s when we slept in old hen houses lit by oil lamps. We washed in cold water from a tub and cooked our own meals.
Among my 35 companions that weekend were Tony and Margaret Garibaldi, stalwarts of the flourishing Stoke-on-Trent YHA group, which then boasted 1,500 members.
That certainly puts today’s biggest YHA groups into perspective, I’m not aware of any that are bigger than a couple of hundred members. Wherever did Stoke group hold their Christmas social?
It’s nice to see some tales of hostelling past appearing in the papers, but a shame that it’s not tied in with how you can still go hostelling today. Still, their website accepts comments, so why not join me in writing in to rectify that fault.
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