touch of adventure)

Holidays with action (and a touch of adventure)

By David Graham

One of the main reasons why people stay in hotels is that they like having things done for them: meals prepared, drinks served, rooms cleaned and so on. And a very good reason, too; it’s nice to be waited on when you’re on holiday. But more and more visitors to Britain are taking to the outdoor life—for exactly the opposite reason. If you’re young, energetic and adventurous, you don’t want to have everything done for you; you much prefer to do it yourself.

There’s nothing very new in this, of course. It’s a long time since young people (and not only young people) first discovered that it’s often more fun to put up a tent in a wood than to book a room in a hotel and that there’s a special sort of enjoyment about a meal cooked by yourself in the open air that even the classiest of five-star restaurants cannot hope to rival. (The quality of the cooking has nothing to do with it!) But nowadays “doing it yourself” when on holiday doesn’t only mean providing your own meals and accommodation. For the open air is an adventure land full of all sorts of other possibilities for action holidays besides the pioneer (and ever popu lar) one of camping. The only snag is that many people probably still

think of them as impossibilities, well beyond reach unless you already hap pen to be an expert or own the right equipment. Things like pony-trekking, sailing, canoeing, ski-ing, mountain eering, gliding—wonderful ways of spending a holiday, but what (you may ask) is the good of even con sidering them if you’ve never sat on a pony’s back or never handled a boat—or, for that matter, never been to Britain?

Well, the simple answer is that all these activities are within your grasp —and it doesn’t matter in the least if you are a complete novice. Britain is a country which might almost have been specially designed for open-air holidays—and I doubt whether there is any other country in the world which is so well geared to looking after the beginner. Choose whatever sort of open-air sport or activity you like and you can be pretty certain that you can spend a thoroughly en joyable holiday being taught or super vised by experts—so that, by the end of your stay, you will be well on the way to becoming something of an expert yourself.

Besides that, you will see some beautiful parts of the country, you will make good friends among the other people of your own age (from

Britain and abroad) who will be sharing your holiday—and you will probably improve your English as well as your sailing or riding or what ever it is.

There are very many organisations in Britain to assist young visitors from abroad in choosing the holiday they want. Two of the most important are the Sports Council (Bookings De partment —235-237 Old Marylebone Road, London WIN 4AS) and the Scottish Council for Physical Recrea tion (4 Queensferry Street, Edinburgh EH2 4PB); but a good first step would be to obtain, from one of the offices of the British Tourist Auth ority, a copy of the well illustrated publication Young Visitors to Britain —jointly produced by the BTA and the Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges. This gives de tails of the surprisingly wide range of open-air holidays available to young people of all ages (including school age) and the addresses from which further information can be obtained.

The 1973 edition will be available shortly.

Spend half an hour with this in valuable booklet and your head will be brimming with exciting ideas adventure schools in the rugged Scot tish Highlands and elsewhere, under water exploration in Devonshire, gliding in Shropshire, sailing schools, pony-trekking, nature study, folk dancing and folk arts, youth-hostel ling, even shark-fishing. When you decide on an open-air holiday with plenty of action, the possibilities are endless—and, as I said before, they really are possibilities!