I was at Wholehope twice in the very early days, one good experience and one bad, as this story tells. In the late 1940's, I worked for the Inland Revenue and a group of us decided to get together for our very first Hostelling weekend, at Alnham. We worked on Saturday mornings in those days, so we took a late afternoon from Newcastle to Rothbury, then walked over to Alnham Pele, arriving in the dark. Next morning, we awoke to a glorious sunny day - and with the Cheviots covered in a fresh fall of snow, we were hooked!
We had a few more weekends away together at various hostels, including Wholehope, then our group was broken up a bit because one of the girls was posted to a new job in London. After a few weeks, our friend in London was so consumed by homesickness for her native hills that she wrote to me, saying that she fancied spending the Whitsun weekend at Wholehope and asking if I wanted to go. I was definitely on for this, although our memories of our first visit were of how spartan the place was, washing in the freezing cold burn, etc. We booked two places for the weekend, so when a couple of the other girls fancied going too we were fairly confident that we'd all squeeze in somehow.
We were all tired by the time we made it up Clennel Street, but confident of a warm reception and looking forward to a good meal, but the Warden for the weekend was a very sour-faced woman who seemed to take pleasure in telling us the place was full to overflowing, and that there was absolutely no question of our friends getting a place for the night. This was a big blow, and one of the girls was reduced to tears by this news, but to no effect, so we decided to stick together and to limp back down to Alwinton. The Rose and Thistle was full too, but Jeff Foreman let us sleep in his open-sided hay store (it was freezing!) and the next day he gave us a hearty cooked breakfast in the pub, something that restored our faith in human nature. As things worked out, we never went back to Wholehope, but I'll always remember the quality of the air up there, it was like a vintage wine.
Back to the first page of this website
Click to leave comments about this article
