Leading for HF Holidays - Then and Now
A couple of weekends ago, following my application and a telephone interview, I was invited to attend an HF Leaders 'Guidelines Assessment' to see if I still wanted to be an HF Walks Leader afterwards. Oh, and to see if they wanted me as well :-) It was at
Derwent Bank near Keswick. We went out walking each day and talked about the way HF Holidays are organised, in the evening. There were guests enjoying a 'Tinsel and Turkey' holiday at the same time giving us the opportunity to get a good impression of how things worked. As usual with HF the food was superb.
This is not the first time I have stayed with HF. As a family we have been on several HF holdays over the years. Normally, when you go out walking with children you have to work hard to keep morale up but on an HF Family Holiday they meet other kids and they don't even seem to notice that they are out walking. I also used to lead walks for HF Holidays in the 70s and 80s.
When I was 18 and waiting for my A Level results I didn't want to hang around the house in South East London and I managed to get a job working as a Kitchen Porter at a Countrywide Holidays Association (CHA) Guest House in Onich near Glencoe called Craig Mhor. It isn't owned by CHA any more but I had a great time there going out walking with the Guests on my day off. The people leading the walks were called Secretaries. This harked back to a time when their role included collecting the balance of peoples' Holiday Payment.
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| Evelyn the Cook doing my job as I 'supervise' my boss. (Posed 1976) |
The CHA was founded in 1893 by the Rev. T. Arthur Leonard who came from Colne in Lancashire. The organization was originally known as the Co-Operative Holidays Association, and was set up to provide walking holidays for working people, especially from industrial areas like Blackburn and Manchester. In 1913 he left the association to form the Holiday Fellowship, now known as HF. In the early 1950’s the name of the Association was changed to the Countrywide Holidays Association.
Meanwhile, back in Onich, I felt that it would be more fun leading walks than washing up so I went for an interview at Birch Heys, the CHA Head Office in Manchester, and armed with references from the Secretary and the Manager, I was given a job leading walks from Craig Mhor the following season. I wasn't totally inexperienced I hasten to add. I had done plenty of walking, climbing and navigating with my parents and in the Scouts.
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| Staff at Craig Mhor 1976 with me on the right |
I was there for the whole season - May to September. They had a three week programme of walks, and highlights included completing all the Mamores in a day on my day off as well as leading parties on Curved Ridge, Buachaille Etive Mor, Aonach Eagach and the Ben Nevis Arete. No organisation today would let a 19 year old with no walking qualifications lead parties on these scrambles but everyone who came was perfectly capable and there were no accidents.
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| 50 on Sunday Morning Walk - Beinn an Aonach Mhor 1977 |
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| Aonach Eagach 1977 |
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| Bidean across Loch Leven 1977 |
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| My old rucksack on Aonach Beag looking at Carn Mor Dearg 1977 |
The world has moved on since and that's why I have obtained my Mountain
Leader Award and attended this HF Holidays selection weekend. It is
absolutely right that people going on holiday should have a competent
leader and walking organisations need some mechanism for making sure of
this. I do not believe that we should be making walking in the hills
risk free but people need to be able to properly understand any risks
they are taking and have some idea who is leading them.
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| Loch Leven and Sgurr na Ciche (aka Pap of Glencoe) 1977 |
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| Party on Am Bodach Ridge Led by Peter Wilson 1977 |
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| Stob Ban Ridge then Sgurr a Mhaim then Grey Corries at the back 1977 |
The following year I again led walks for CHA from their house in Grasmere. I was a student at Warwick University by then but I still had the extended student holidays from July to September. There was a two week programme of walks that included nearly all the major peaks and some delightful shorter walks in the beautiful Lakeland valleys. I always felt that the easier walks in Glencoe played second fiddle because the harder "A" walks seemed to have been planned first, then the middle "B" walks. With the easier "C" walks having to be found somewhere in the same area - as everybody used the same coach on most occasions. There were som notable exceptions of course; Lismore Island, Steal and Coire Gabhail (aka Hidden/Lost Valley) being examples. At Grasmere however there was a lot more choice. Sometimes the groups were too large and even with a backmarker it was hard to keep track of everyone.
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| Grasmere 1978 with me on the left |
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| Grasmere Sunday Morning Walk Alcock Tarn 1978 |
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| Party of 37 coming down to Threshwaite Mouth 1978 |
I remember having to call the Mountain Rescue Team once when a gentleman in one of these larger groups 'vanished' on the Ill Bell to Yoke ridge. We stopped in the mist and and I counted the group. A few minutes later I counted again and we were one down. We searched for quite a while but in the end we all carried on down to Troutbeck and I called 999 from the Phone Box. The house management and I had a fretful evening but he turned up safe and well. He had stopped to put his overtrousers on without telling anyone. When he found he was all alone in the mist, he just headed for the valley.
In 1979 I switched to leading for HF Holidays and returned to Glencoe. Alltshellach near Ballachulish is a beautiful old house on the shores of Loch Leven. I led all the old walks from two years ago for another student summer holiday. TA Leonard supposedly quit CHA to form HF because CHA had become "too middle class" but I remember HF being quicker to replace Lino with Carpets and even to introduce some en-suite bathrooms! Although the 'race for the bath' as you got off the coach and the politics that surrounded it was an interesting feature of any holiday. I think it was this willingness to move with the times that helped HF carry on while CHA declined.
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| Na Gruagaichean from Sgurr Eilde Beag |
When I finished at University I became a Secondary School Maths Teacher and for several years I carried on leading for HF at Conway (1980), Loch Awe (1981), Arran (1982), Coniston (1983) and Derwent Bank near Keswick (1984 and 1985). This included a Music Week and a Scottish Country Dancing week where people only walked in the afternoon but in both cases had a propensity to start singing or dancing whilst out on the walks! Good times.
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| Cir Mhor from Glen Rosa (Arran 1982) |
