Youth hostels were not unique in their origins. They were part of a revolution in travel and tourism in Britain in the early 20th century, promoted by journalists like SPB Mais and HV Morton.
They show that widespread support from many quarters will be needed if we’re to get truly sustainable tourism, holiday making and travel for all today.
Like Morton, Mais worked on the Daily Express, as a book reviewer and leader writer. But Mais’ ideas about travel were different to Morton’s.
Walking whenever
He claimed to have walked over most of England. He wanted people to stuff their pockets with maps, “to wander about at home” in Britain. [1]
In 1932, the BBC commissioned Mais to travel through England, Scotland, and Wales. He would describe the journey in seventeen radio broadcasts.
In a relentless schedule he visited a new area each week. He set out on Thursdays, returning by Saturdays. He compressed all he had seen into a 20 minute talk given each Monday.
Mais covered 15,000 miles. He avoided well known places like the Lake District. He obeyed instinct, each place a gamble and no place let him down.
Foreign and strange
People guided him; an innkeeper’s daughter, a blacksmith, drivers, bus drivers and a gamekeeper. People helped without payment.
He rode on a lorry. He travelled by car, bus and train. Whenever he could he walked, in Dorset, Shropshire, Lancashire, Somerset, Derbyshire, Ayrshire and more.
We glimpse a world that is lost in the book he later published.[2] Men carried coracles on their backs in Carmarthenshire. He could get a cup of milk or a glass of water from farms he passed.
Food was local. Accents and dialects confused him and made him think his home land was as foreign and strange as anywhere.
High hills
He was a lover of high hills. He stimulated his readers and listeners to explore and rediscover Britain.
He enjoyed enormous success after publishing his book. He ran a train from London so that people could climb the South Downs to watch the sunrise. Expecting 40 walkers, 1,440 turned up.
He supported holidays that avoided the bandstand and the beach, and transformed people. He didn’t dislike seaside holidays or Blackpool, but he thought enough people already promoted them.
Mais extolled travel, and adventure, off the beaten track, travel that came with a sense of revelation, and exhilaration.
New tourism
Others were also promoting a new style of tourism of the sort Mais wanted. Thomas Cook had lowered the barriers to travel when he launched his eponymous tours after 1841.
What had once been the leisured pursuit of the very wealthy spread in the wake of better transport, shorter working hours, and holidays with pay.
TA Leonard followed Cook when he started the Cooperative Holidays Association in 1893, and later the Holiday Fellowship, bringing travel to the less well off, especially for young people. The Workers Travel Association first took working people on holidays over the English Channel in 1922.
Beastly
These three offered centre based holidays for those with a week or more of paid holiday. But touring holidays were limited to those who could afford the price of inns and hotels.
And those in the opinion of one writer were “too expensive.. their food is beastly and their manners are worse.” [3]
Douglas Goldring was a travel writer who travelled around England by bus in 1936. He had been told that hotels de luxe, particularly converted country mansions standing in their original parks, were extremely good. But he had never been able to afford one.
The same was true of large hotels, often the property of railway companies, in provincial towns. They called themselves first-class and charged first-class prices. Of them his ignorance was complete.
Cheap and vile
But he was familiar with the second-class country hotel, “the descendant of the old coaching inn, one or two examples of which are to be found in nearly every town.” [4]
Below them were the very many small hotels, and village pubs. Rooms in these were poorly furnished, and badly lit.
Running water, cold or hot, was regarded as remarkable and charged for. Food was poor, “the cheapest white bread, the vilest cheese” and “adulterated, unidentifiable jams.” [5]
Something new
A new kind of accommodation was needed. Walkers and young people especially wanted something egalitarian offering comradeship.
For women the demand was more acute. Many parents would not allow their daughters to travel at all. Fathers legally controlled unmarried daughters and demanded suitable accommodation for them.
Unchaperoned travel for unmarried women was still unusual and could lead to accommodation being refused them. The reverse was also true, that travel by young unmarried women could also be unsafe. They could be mistaken for prostitutes. They could be subjected to abuse or violence.
A matter of health
HR Ecroyd of the British Youth Council stated exactly what was wanted. On 20 June 1929 he wrote “we need in great [sic] Britain a network of simple shelters … where all who are touring the country may spend the night at a minimum cost.
“It is a matter of public health and national welfare to give fresh access to nature in this way to youth who is suffering from evil housing conditions in cities.” [6]
His letter is a brief demand for simple inexpensive shelters. He wanted wider access to tourism, to bring about better health, welfare, and more access to nature for young people.
A beginning
His letter left no doubt that something new was needed. Today we’d call that sustainable tourism.
The wide social support from writers like Mais, and from organisations like CHA for new forms of tourism and accommodation show that change doesn’t happen in isolation. That kind of widespread support will be needed if we’re to get sustainable tourism today.
Hotels and guests houses are making gestures. Lights will turn out if you leave your room, taking your key with you. You can ask for laundry only to be done when it’s needed.
There are indicators that sustainable travel is available for those who can afford it. But widespread support from many quarters will be needed if we’re to get truly sustainable tourism, holiday making and travel for all.
Notes
Image from This Unknown Island.
[1] Mais, SPB, See England First, Richards, 1936
[2] Mais, SPB, This Unknown Island, Putnam, 1932
[3] Goldring, Douglas, Pot Luck in England, Chapman & Hall, 1936
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Open letter from HR Ecroyd, Hon Hostels Secretary, British Youth Council, asking for network of simple shelters, 20 June 1929, Y712001-1929-1 in YHA Archive.