youth hostels, the history, people and ideas behind them
For anyone interested in social history hostels are great. You can visit hostels that played a part in a big social movement, discover another part of the hostel story or get a feel for what people valued most almost a century ago. With a bit of imagination you can carry yourself back to a time... Continue Reading →
Two cyclists and a bluebird from the YHA (England and Wales) handbook of 1942. Isabel Bacheler Smith designed them for the American youth hostel’s magazine The Knapsack. She founded the youth hostels association of the USA with her husband Monroe. In the summer of 1933 Isabel and Monroe Smith toured Germany with a group of Boy... Continue Reading →
I've long been interested in the influence Quakers had on youth hostels. Quakers gave youth hostels an ethos of simplicity and companionship that endured for years and, more tangibly, they ran regions and brought many properties to the infant YHA. In his memoirs Charles Allen, first regional secretary in Devon and Cornwall, wrote that it... Continue Reading →
In 1932 people around Europe banded together and started an era of travel for all young people. Here's the brief story of those events. You can read the full story of how youth hostels developed in Richard Schirrmann, the man who invented youth hostels, available from Amazon, paperback or kindle. In the early 1930s different... Continue Reading →
The YHA Archive has recently acquired a very special item – a spiral bound typewritten personal memoir of Charles Allen, one of the pioneer organisers of the YHA in Devon and Cornwall from the 1930s to the 1960s. John Martin, YHA's Honorary Archivist, writes that it dates from the late 1970s. Charles Allen, was... Continue Reading →
SIMPLY HOSTELS 