One thing that I was determined to pass on during my teaching life, was a love of walking, and in particular, Youth Hostelling. When I joined the school, there was no current member of staff prepared to take students on walking holidays, and i guess there were good reasons for that even then. However I was young and probably foolish and had a strong urge to pay back some of the good that MIke Woods had done for me. And so with an older female colleague, I began to organise and conduct walking holidays for the full range of students.
Now for those who have never heard of the Youth Hostels Association, there were/are an international network of hostels, owned by the association, that provided, bed and basic meals for very reasonable prices, for anyone prepared to pay the small membership fee. In those days, cars and motorised transport of any kind was not allowed, and so hostellers would have to arrive on foot or by bicycle. Everyone slept in dormitories, ate together in primitive dining rooms, and as part of the deal, hostellers were required to participate in basic chores, including cleaning dormitories and washrooms, washing up after meals, making the horrible packed lunches and whatever took the wardens fancy. I remember one morning before a particularly gruelling walk, being asked to shift a couple of tons of shingle onto the car park. Not what we really needed but it had to be done.
The bulk of the trips i took over the many years were to Snowdonia in North Wales. The reason for that choice was that it was as far from the Island as we could get in one day, and that it is an environment that is so very different from what the students had experienced before.
North Wales has a bleak beauty in its landscape and even on a sunny day, grey seems to dominate. When it rains, which is most of the time, everything is grey, and the people reflect that greyness, especially in their attitude to the English. TBC
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A group of English tourists climbing in Snowdonia came across a shepherd sitting at the top of the hill watching over his sheep.
"I suppose you can see a great distance from here on a clear day," said one of the tourists.
"Yes, indeed," said the shepherd seriously, "on a clear day you can see five television regions.
"I suppose on a clear day now you could see as far as London from this great altitude," said one of the climbers, nudging his companions.
"Oh, you can see much farther than that," said the shepherd.
"Further than London?" gasped the tourists.
"Oh, yes, further than America even."
"Further than America?" shouted the climbers, "that's impossible."
"Well," said the shepherd, "if you don't believe me, just you sit down here for a couple of hours and if the clouds will clear you'll see the moon.
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