YOUTH HOSTELS: AN EMPIRE SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 169, 13 April 1935, Page 6

YOUTH HOSTELS: AN EMPIRE SERVICE

The “hiking” craze which swept the United .Kingdom some two or three years ago has left permanent memorials in the Youth Hostel Association and its 212 properties dotted over England, Scotland and Wales. As a result, although the countryside has lost the fancydress pedestrians who moved .about it in droves—and does not miss them —the way has been made easier and. the. nightly pillow softer for the many thousands of people whose joy it has been, always to explore rural beauties on foot. Those who go adventuring so are normally not rich people, and to them the youth hostels have opened an. endless trail of new delights. Not Britons only,. . but also an increasingly large number each year .of visitors from the Continent are by these aids drawn into intimate touch with the English countryside and the English people. Fewer penetrate to Scotland and to Wales; but those who do, go again and again. In a small, unassuming way, therefore, the Youth Hostel Movement makes its contribution to the causes of international friendship and international peace. Why not also, and on a larger scale, to Imperial fellowship and' Imperial understanding? Successful attempts have been made in Canterbury and on the West Coast of the South Island to transplant the youth hostel system to this country. .The promoters are hopeful of extending their organisation throughout the Dominion and they.are associated with, if not affiliated to, the movement at Home. It might be worth their while to explore the possibilities of organising planned walking tours of the Old Country for New Zealanders. It does not cost a great deal now to go Home and come back; it still costs, a good deal, in the ordinary man’s reckoning, to live at Home while one is seeing what is to be seen there. But it need not. Young people especially do not demand all the comforts and extras commonly provided for tourists. A traveller spends his money in travelling, in lodging and in feeding himself. When he travels on foot he saves on one item of that overhead; when he belongs to the Youth Hostel Association and plots his progress to take fullest. advantage of the Ipstels now provided, he saves also on the other two items. Apart from the small charges made to enter and inspect historical buildings and grounds, and occasional extra pleasures incidental to travel, there seems no good reason why a tramping holiday at Home—-or, for that matter, a cycling holiday—ought to be any more expensive to a New Zealander than a tramping or a cycling holiday in the Dominion. For as much again as his return steamer fare at the very outside, and probably for half as much again, he ought to be able to spend from two to four months drinking in the magic and romance of the Homelands.

Visitors from Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Japan, said a British official wireless message earlier in the week, are at present on a walking tour in the English Lake District, making use of the hostels as they go. There can be no question that visitors from Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand will be equally welcome there, and the King’s Jubilee Year might appropriately be marked by an effort to organise such tours of Empire young people. If the Youth Hostel Association could say, “For £120”- L -or £l5O. or whatever it might be—“we can offer you a return trip to the Old Country and three months’ tour on foot of every part of it,” there would be immediately a double response. First from those fortunate enough to be able to take such a trip at once, and secondly from those .who would begin right away to save in order to take one in the future.