Camping and Youth Hostelling
At half terms, a group of the boys would often go camping or youth hostelling, supervised by Simon and/or some of the other men who from time to time assisted Miss Travers in the West Wing. Most of us came to love a life under canvas, helping to cook the group’s meals on a campfire and erecting and dismantling the tents [no sewn-in groundsheets, nylon tents or formal campsites then].
My first camp was near Penshurst in the summer of 1953. This coincided with the Queen’s coronation, and provided also my first experience of television. Two television sets had been set up in the village hall, and we joined the locals to watch the coronation live [in those days, most homes did not yet have a television]. We sat in rows of chairs separated by a central aisle, with the television sets in front on either side of the aisle, I suppose because not everyone would have been able to get a good view from a single television in the centre. They were very small sets by today’s standards, and of course black and white. The picture on one set had a pink tinge, and it was quite odd to switch my eyes now and then from the black and white picture to the same picture in a grey-pink monochrome.
A few days later, we were taken to London to see the route of the coronation procession, now almost deserted but with the roads lined with the empty stands which had been erected to enable Londoners to view the procession.
Camping from Hatch involved one fixed location, but when we visited youth hostels we travelled quite some distance, through Kent and also into Surrey and Sussex, staying at a different hostel each night. Favourite hostels included Blackboys, Goudhurst and Alfriston, and shortly before I left Caldecott we travelled even farther afield, visiting Winchester and the Isle of Wight. We usually travelled in three separate groups, sometimes cycling and at other times hitch-hiking [at a time before the invention of seat belts and the Media’s obsession with paedophiles, nobody considered this to be at all dangerous].
Sometimes we cheated. It was a firm rule that youth hostels were open only to people who arrived under their own power, whether by walking or cycling; arriving by car was strictly taboo. I remember one occasion when we were divided into three groups, each taking its turn to cycle, to hitch-hike [this was acceptable, probably because it was likely to involve some walking, and perhaps also because it involved the exercise of our initiative] and to be driven in ‘the van’, which would be parked out of sight of the youth hostel, and which we were of course forbidden to mention while we were there.
Youth hostels provided a communal experience to which Caldecott people were no strangers. We would all have to muck in and help with the chores, whether cooking, washing up or cleaning. We soon realised that the term ‘youth hostel’ was a misnomer; hostels were open to people of all ages. I remember a quite elderly man at one hostel whom we nicknamed Charlie, who tried to allocate duties to us until Simon had a word with him.
Since leaving Caldecott, I have enjoyed camping many times, including with my own children. I have never since visited an English youth hostel, but twice joined the SYHA when rained temporarily out of a camping trip in Scotland, and for several years collected individual youth hostel badges which I sewed onto a rucksack which sadly is no more. Communal and segregated dormitories tend to put off couples and families [although I believe that the YHA has moved with the times, and now sometimes provides double or family rooms and even [sacrilege!] allows travel by car].
Camping has also developed, and erecting a tent on open land, or with the permission of a farmer, has given way to formal campsites with toilets and showers and even a camp shop. I am reminded of a time in the early seventies when, approaching Portree on the Isle of Skye in the dark, I pitched my tent on a level stretch of ground in a field beside the road. On waking in the morning I discovered that it was the local golf course, and took down the tent and departed speedily.
While I recall with nostalgia pitching a tent, cooking in the open air and the snug feeling of lying in a [waterproof] tent and listening to the sound of the rain, I am now in my seventieth year, and notwithstanding toilets and showers I believe my camping days are over.
Photographs, top to bottom:
My first camp [June 1953]
At camp [ I'm second from left. Simon Rodway, right]
Alfriston Youth Hostel
Winchester Youth Hostel