I first went youth hostelling in 1943, with a gang of school friends (‘The magical places’: readers on their youth hostel memories, 1 July). We had a wonderful time and a taste of freedom. In 1944 I was 16. I left school in July and had two months off before university started. So I set off on my own. It was wartime and so there was hardly any traffic. One could cycle all day and not see a car or lorry. In the Highlands of Scotland, youth hostels were stone bothies and the warden, often the local ferryman, lived next door. There was no electricity and cooking was on a coal-fired range. Hostellers brought their own food and were expected to do tasks such as bringing in coal. Cycling alone in the West Highlands was a truly magical experience.
Enid Gauldie
Invergowrie, Perth and Kinross
• As teenagers when the second world war ended, we set off from south London, cycled into the Surrey hills and stayed at Ewhurst and Tanners Hatch hostels. Later I cycled with a friend to Winchester, to stay in the City Mill. It was so primitive that you dipped a bowl into the river to obtain water for washing. There was always magic in arriving at a hostel and wondering what you would find. The National Trust recently reclaimed use of the entire building so it is no longer a youth hostel. Many years later, I accompanied primary schoolchildren to Golant hostel near Fowey. The boys’ dormitory was up in the roof. They called it Colditz.
Sue Fish
Southampton
• I studied politics under Harold Bing at the Co-operative College, Stanford Hall in the 1960s. Among the many unassuming tales he told – being a conscientious objector in the first world war, visiting Germany in the 1920s and 30s, and carrying materials for the anti-Nazi resistance – was one of broadcasting a talk on the BBC about the hostelling and hiking movement in Germany. The Youth Movement Abroad aired in early April 1929 on 2LO. He suggested, in all modesty, that it may have led to the founding of the Youth Hostels Association.
Dave Verguson
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
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