YOUTH HOSTELS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 17 December 1936, Page 9

YOUTH HOSTELS

NEW ZEALAND ASSOCIATION -MR J. E. LOVELOCK APPOINTED VICE PRESIDENT DOMINION MOVEMENT Mr J. E. Lovelock, during his three years at Oxford, tramped a great deal in tile Lake District, the Cotswolds, the Avon Valley, the Wye Valley and the South Downs, staying always at the Youth Hostels. It is these same hostels that many of the New Zealand Y.H.A. party going to England next year have planned to visit. Mr Lovelock, because he realises the value of the community of Louth Hostels, is interested in the New Zealand movement and has just accepted nomination as a vice-president of the Now Zealand Youth Hostels Association, in the position left vacant by the late Mrs F. Wilding. In a letter accepting nomination, Mr Lovelock stated that although he had so often availed himself of the excellent hostel facilities in Britain, he had not been aware, until quite recently, of their existence in New Zealand.

The New Zealand Hostels, although on a very humble scale compared with the overseas hostels, have nevertheless accomplished very useful service in the past four years of their existence, enabling many .hundreds to go for long walking holidays out in the open. The present Government has recognised the value of the Y.H.A. and recently gave a third concession on all railway tickets to Y.H.A. members engaged on a tramping expedition. The Oxford Service car has also given a much appreciated concession. Overseas the railways and channel ferry seamers gave important concessions from practically the foundation of the Y.H.A.

The hostels here, as in all overseas countries, are open not only to tampers, but also to cyclists, their only qualification for membership being that they must travel under their own muscular power, so this excludes motor-cycles or : lars. In Holland the form of locomotion adopted by some I.H.A. members is a canoe and they paddle themselves down

canal from one hostel to another

The Youth hostels have spread over Banks Peninsula, Akaroa, Barry’s Bay, Duvauehclles, Kennedy’s Bush, Holmes Bay, Le Bon’e, Little Akaroa, Okaine, ana Pigeon Bay. The Peninsula makes an excellent tramping ground with its winding roads commanding magnificent views over the wide-stretching plain, ending with snow-capped Alps on the one side and on the other the blue waters of the Akaroa harbour. The Hamper has every oportunity of sea bathing. The second chain of hostels is on the West Coast, and instead of farmhouses on the Peninsula, whose owners have so hospitably received Y.H.A. Hampers, hotols have been more used. Unfortunately, hotels who helped before have withdrawn, as putting up Hampers to them, at Is a night and Is 3d a dinner, is more a public-spirited act, not a money making concern. Mr Mclntosh, of the Hokitika Hotel and Mr Dunn of the Duvauchelles’ hotel, are generously continuing to remain Youth Hostels, but, especially on the coast, there is urgent need for more Youth Hostels. Anyone willing to help is asked to communicate with the Y.H.A. Hon. Organiser. Requests are constantly being made by young people, who often have slender purses, for hostels accommodation on the Kaikoura road, the Punakaiki road, and the Waihi road... The commencement of the new chain in splendi tramping country has just been ionned in the Oxford region, comprising the foothills and the deep valleys and gorges which lead in to . the Alpsi The one hostel is at Cooper’s Greek, the other at Ashley Gorge. It is hoped that this chain will be extended, though either hostels make a splendid centre for two or three days, from which to make expeditions up the Ashley Gorge, climbing Mt. Oxford, or Mt. Richardson, or following up the Lees Valley. Full details of the hostels will appear in the new Y.H.A. handbook, now m process of publication. The message for the handbook by Mr J. E. Lovelock, the greatest living New Zealand athlete, and himself a great Hamper, is us follows : “My sincere good wishes for the future success of the movement, which I know through much personal experience to be a very valuable one to the youth of this, as well as to every other country, and to hope that the young people of New Zealand may be enabled to take full advantage of tile splendid opportunities which they are I feel perhaps at present not sufficiently aware. Not until they have sampled the over(l’cwdecl life in older paits of the wor'd can they fully appreciate the opportunities which they possess in this country, and I trust most sincerely that the Y.H.A movement will grow in strength and receive the full support that it deserves, not only from the youth, hut also from the older members of the community, who can do so much to help the work along by material support.”