In the early 1950's, I was living in Tynemouth and belonged to the local Sea Scouts where I became friendly with a Hungarian immigrant. Talking with him one day, the subject of skiing came up and he told me had an old pair of skis that I could have - I jumped at the chance! I was friendly with a lad called Dave Johnson, he too had an old pair of skis and also loved the outdoors and camping, etc. There was a heavy snowfall that winter; I believe it was the winter of 1952-3, so we practiced our skiing on the local golf course and as we skied we talked about going away skiing together. From somewhere the name of Wholehope came up as a good place to ski in the Cheviot Hills, and as we had enjoyed the 'golf course' we thought we should give Wholehope the benefit of our new skills! We had no idea exactly where Wholehope was, only that it was near a village called Alwinton in the Cheviot Hills, so after some research, we decided to take the bus on Friday night from Newcastle to Thropton and walk to Alwinton carrying our skis. After walking the 6-7 miles to Alwinton we thankfully saw the lights of the Rose and Thistle Pub, and since we were both exhausted and freezing cold (no proper ski clothing) we welcomed the warmth of the pub and a pint of beer! When circulation was restored, we reluctantly thought of walking the rest of the way up to Wholehope, but it was getting even colder and some wise thinking person suggested we should sleep in the hay barn at the back of the pub. To our amazement there were quite a few other people already in the barn, I recall the names of Eric and Sadie, Tug Wilson, Hugh Hunter and Johnny Gorman.
The following morning dawned bright and sunny and we set off following the others up a track, which I later learned was called Clennel Street, until we spied a white building in the distance which was, as we were informed, the famous Wholehope Hostel! It seemed to stand out on the top of a hill devoid of all trees and very uninviting, and the closer we got the worse it looked! My first impression of crossing the threshold was that it was worse on the inside than out; however we were going to make the best of it and looking around we found it had a fireplace - hooray! We soon learned that the fire was lit by using wood, coal and a liberal amount of paraffin, everyone stood back while a match was struck and thrown on the fire. Water was lugged in by bucket from a spring in a field out the back and meals were cooked in the kitchen, which could only be described as 'primitive', comprising only a gas ring which was fed from a large gas cylinder by a rubber hose. The gas cylinder and other items such as coal for the fire were brought up from Alwinton as required. Later, after being warmed by the fire, we asked where we slept and were informed that we would sleep on the floor of the loft which was over the byre which doubled as the men/women's washroom. At this time my impression was that I had walked back into the 17th Century and I wandered what my friend Dave had brought me to, but little did I realise then how I would come to love the beauty of this place and the friendships I enjoyed there.
We had come to ski, so off we went to try our skis. On the first run I managed to stay upright, then I got brave and went down to the first gate about 100 yards down the track, but not knowing how to stop I had to fall over! That worked. The next day, Sunday, Dave and I enjoyed more skiing then it was time to head off on the three mile walk down to Alwinton. From there, the publican, Jeff Foreman took us all to Thropton in his trailer, charging 2 shillings and sixpence for the trip, and from Thropton we took the bus back to Newcastle.
That's it, the story of my first visit to Wholehope; a place that I returned to many times over the following years to enjoy the beauty of the Cheviots, ski, walk the hills and do some slightly illegal 'fishing' in the streams.
P.S. Charlie McGonnigal was a regular at Wholehope and he was one of the most colourful characters that I ever knew, I was there the weekend he proposed blasting out the swimming pool!
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