THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408240076
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 267 lines
FIRST LET ME SHOW YOU around this place I've found. Then you'll understand what an incredible deal it is. It's called Esthwaite Lodge and it sits on the shore of little Esthwaite Water in England's Lakes District. It typifies what many consider to be a classic Regency Period mansion.
Restrained elegance is a term often used to describe homes such as these built in the early 1800s. Stucco ornaments decorate the ceilings and many walls; usually it's low relief and left white with pastel-colored background, as in the cupola over the main staircase. There are delicate, hand-carved cornices in what was the library.
From my upstairs room - my room with a view - through tall windows with wavy-glass panes, I look out over landscaped lawns, past sheep grazing between blue-gray drystone walls, to the sparkling little lake and the bottle-green hills beyond.
Poets and novelists - Francis Brett Young and Hugh Walpole among them - have lived here and presumably found inspiration in this very house. Prince Philip visited once; pictures of that celebrated occasion hang downstairs.
William Wordsworth, the only local-born of England's famous Lake Poets, went to grammar school just up the road in the 1,000-year-old village of Hawkshead, unspoiled in appearance although it is a center for hikers and houses modern, high-quality shops behind tastefully done stone facades.
Young Will carved his name in his desk as schoolboys are wont to do and took room and board at Anne Tyson's cute little stone cottage, which is a B&B today. Another pair of ``old boys'' from the school, brothers Sir Edwin and George Sandys, were instrumental in setting up Virginia's first General Assembly 375 years ago.
Wordsworth wrote a rhapsodic, not to mention solid and factual, ``Guide to the Lakes'' in which he observed that the 15th century Hawkshead Church sat on its hilltop ``like a throned Lady, sending out a gracious look over all its domain.'' His guide went into five editions between 1810 and 1835, and it also was responsible for the celebrated anecdote about the admiring Methodist parson who enquired if Mr. Wordsworth had written anything else.
Peter Rabbit was ``born'' near here, too. Beatrix Potter bought Hill Top Farm just over there at Near Sawrey (its neighbor village is Far Sawrey) to raise sheep and write some of the most beloved children's stories of all time. I stopped for refreshment at the Tower Bank Arms, a roadside pub adjacent to her place. You may remember it from ``The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck.''
Maybe, if you've read Beatrix Potter, you now remember Esthwaite Water. It was the home of Jeremy Fisher, the dapper frog with an appetite for butterfly sandwiches and minnows.
Nice neighborhood. Nice place, this Esthwaite Lodge. Especially nice price. For this tranquil little piece of heaven in the heart of an area that has been a bustling - and pricey - tourist mecca for more than two centuries, I am paying about $34 double, breakfast included.
That's a ``proper cooked brekkie'' by the way. Throughout Britain, they go whole hog with the morning meal: Eggs, bacon, what passes for sausage (my guess is that it's sawdust somehow processed with lard), toast soaked in grease on the plate, more cold toast on the side with butter and marmalade and maybe cereal or juice, plus coffee or tea. You simply have to rationalize (yes, cholesterol can kill you, but so can an automobile) or go hungry.
Esthwaite Lodge is a youth hostel, one of the more pleasant stops on my Sleep Cheap Across Europe adventure tour that took me to 17 youth hostels from the west coast of Britain to central Hungary.
When I first began traveling overseas I used as my principal guide a book called ``England on $5 a Day.'' If you are as old as I am now, you are chuckling and saying, ``Those were the days.'' If you are as young as I was then, you probably are saying, ``You're kidding. . . aren't you?''
No, I am not kidding. And, yes, times and the economy have changed. But it's all sort of relative. You CAN still sleep cheap - and eat cheap, too - if you set your mind to being a good student of travel economy and do your homework.
The $34 double at Esthwaithe Lodge is actually a bit high compared to other hostels where I stayed, but in terms of value received quite reasonable. Accommodations elsewhere in the Lakes District usually run much higher.
Youth hostels were established to offer a good night's sleep in friendly surroundings at an affordable price. There are more than 5,000 of them in 60 countries around the world. There are 240 in England and Wales, which together are about the size of Georgia.
You must be a Hostelling International member to use the facilities. A membership card costs $25 a year for ages 18-54 and $15 for 55-plus, and is good throughout the world. With overnight stays as low as $6, you'll save enough to cover membership in as little as a day.
Write: Hostelling International, 733 15th St., Suite 840, Washington, D.C., or call (202) 783-6161 for information.
I had no idea what to expect when I set out, but I did have some perceptions that made me slightly apprehensive. Like, am I too old for this? Most turned out to be wrong.
Youth hostels are not just for ``youths.'' I saw very few, in fact, although I'm told that is not usually the case. I did see many young couples - in their late 20s or early 30s, I'd guess - with several children. Lots of ``older'' people, too, like me. Hikers seem to congregate in the countryside hostels, young college backpackers on the Grand Tour in the hostels of Europe's major cities.
Accommodations are hardly primitive, but they can be somewhat spartan. If you travel with matching Jordache luggage and are used to terricloth robes, hair dryers, fancy cosmetics and maybe a telephone in the bathroom, youth hostels probably are not for you.
All hostels have single-sex ``dorm'' rooms of various sizes; some offer the privacy of smaller ``family'' rooms. You have to shop around for the latter and they cost slightly more.
Hostels have only bunk beds, even in the family rooms. Blanket (or duvet) and pillow are on the bed; you receive a clean sleep-sack type sheet and pillowcase when you register.
Dorm rooms often come with the same sounds, and smells, I associate with an army barracks.
Showers and toilets are always ``down the hall'' although most rooms have a wash basin. This is not unlike most European B&Bs. You must furnish your own soap and towel.
Breakfast is usually available but not always included in the price - ``full'' in the U.K., continental on the continent. Many hostels, but again not all, have a ``member's kitchen'' where you can do your own cooking and save even more money. All the equipment you'll need is provided free; you're expected to help keep the place clean.
Remember this above all else: It is essential to book ahead. A phone call is only a slight extra expense and well worth the cost. Hostel facilities are in high demand. Hostel directories may be obtained when you get your membership card; they also are available at many individual hostels. The tourist information officers of most countries usually have hostel directories and maps.
Many young backpacking hostel-seekers use the ``Let's Go'' books as their basic guide. These wonderful budget bibles list hostels on the Grand Tour cities, but do not always include hostels in the nearby countryside that may be just as convenient. Play with a complete deck. Get all the listings in an area you're visiting.
In making reservations, it's best to call early in the morning - say from 8 to 10 - or in the evening from about 5 until 9. Many hostels are closed during the middle of the day.
Do not be shocked if you are asked to help with some light chore - like wiping off dining tables or perhaps ``Hoovering'' the carpet. This keeps down the cost. At one place, deep in the English countryside, I watched with amusement as broad smiles spread across the faces of several children when they were ``invited'' to slop the hogs with the breakfast leftovers.
In addition to staying at 17 hostels, I examined several others. Most were remarkably pleasant; I would not return to two of them, one because it was a bit shabby, the other because the warden was born a generation too late to work in a concentration camp.
I rejected only one, a charming converted 18th century watermill straddling the River Itchen in Winchester, England. I left because the third-floor men's dorm still had 18th century ventilation - a single small window - and it was a particularly hot day.
The variety of the facilities was amazing.
In Britain I stayed in a converted dockside warehouse in Bristol, in what was once a flax mill in the desolate upland moors of England's heartland, in the middle of a waterfowl refuge along the Sharpness and Gloucester Canal, and in Victorian seaside structures in Cornwall and Wales.
On the continent I stayed in the former summer chalet of a prominent Swiss industrialist on the banks of Lake Thun near Interlaken, in the Austrian cities of Innsbruck (mediocre accommodations) Vienna (pleasant) and Salzburg (filled with Japanese music students), and in an 18-story high-rise overlooking the Danube in Budapest.
Converting as best I can to U.S. dollars, prices ranged from as little as $17.50 for two (no breakfast) in single-sex dorm facilities to about $40 double in a ``family'' room. Actually, I think the Institute San Sebastian in Salzburg, not officially a youth hostel but functioning as one, was even a bit cheaper - about $16 for a double, private room but no breakfast.
The lake chalet hostel in the little village of Leissigen, Switzerland, was unquestionably the best find. This was a place taken over by young European families, mostly German, and run by a wonderfully accommodating woman called Anne from the Black Forest.
It was an interesting ``international'' experience to eat - sort of family-style buffet - on a long table in the lawn beside the lake and listen to the various languages being spoken. There was a shallow area along the shore for young children and a pontoon platform farther out for accomplished swimmers. The sunset, reflecting orange on Lake Thun before settling behind Alpine peaks, is something one should experience at least once in a lifetime.
Once-an-hour trains to Bern or Interlaken make this a great location for exploring the beauty of the Bernase Oberland region of the Alps.
There were at least a half-dozen other special finds, particularly in Britain where a rental car made it easier to get off the beaten tourist track.
Near Burley in Hampshire there was Cottsmore House on the edge of the New Forest. The New Forest is hardly new - it was a royal hunting preserve for William the Conqueror - and its 90,000 acres holds heaths and bogs and grazing land as well as forest. Wild ponies are everywhere, even playing havoc with the greens of a nearby golf course. Here they're protected by law - and presumably can ``play through.''
Near the tiny village of Golant on the south coast of Cornwall there was Penquite House, a mansion built in 1847 on a wooded hill overlooking tilled fields and the River Fowey estuary. A plaque said the Italian patriot Garibaldi visited here in 1864, but it did not say why. A short walk away was the tiny church of St. Sampson, parts of which date to about 1200.
At the tiny hamlet of Llanddeusant in the remote mountains and mainly Welsh-speaking part of South Wales was a spartan hostel more than 200 years old. Until 1945 it was the Red Lion Inn. Its last licensee, Jack Williams, is buried with wife Jane in the adjacent churchyard where sheep graze. Around them black slate grave markers list other predominant Welsh names: Thomas, Evans, Hopkins and Davies. The Welsh word Llanddeusant means Church of Two Saints. The church of Simon and Jude has been here since the 14th century.
There is a notice on the hostel door that reads, ``Please drive slowly on road outside and toward Cross Inn. Hedgehogs crossing - particularly at night.'' This hostel is maintained by the locals on a rotating basis. When I visited, it was Carole Longhurst, who has a pottery workshop in the old church stable next to the hostel.
Less than a half-hour north of London's Heathrow Airport was the very rustic hostel at Jordans. It was a bit TOO spartan for my tastes, but two Dutch girls said it was cheaper (less than $10) to stay there and take an hour's train ride into London than to stay in a city hostel.
Jordans is an interesting place, founded by Quakers and said to be the only village without a pub in England. William Penn is buried about 100 yards from the hostel at the Quaker Meeting House, and a nearby barn allegedly was built with beams from the Mayflower. Just a mile away, at Chanfont St. Giles, is John Milton's cottage, where he moved in 1666 to escape the plague in London, finished ``Paradise Lost'' and began ``Paradise Regained.''
In Salzburg, Austria, where I stayed at the incredibly cheap Institute San Sebastian (about $16 double, no breakfast, for a fourth-floor walkup) on the Linzergasse in one of the older sections of the city, I decided to do some comparative shopping. I used a Fodor's Guide and priced four listed lodgings within a block of San Sebastian.
Fodor classifies the Amadeus and the Trumer Stube as moderate. Both are three-star establishments. The Amadeus was asking about $70 single, $120 double, with breakfast; the Trumer Stube was asking about $98 to $125 single, $125 to $155 double, with breakfast.
The Goldene Krone and the Schwarzes Rossl, both two-star, fall in Fodor's budget category. The Goldene Krone, directly across the street from San Sebastian, was asking about $55 single, $97 double, with breakfast. The Schwarzes Rossl was asking about $39 single, $64 double. Both places included breakfast.
Budapest was an adventure of a different sort. There are 21 youth hostels in the Hungarian capital operated, or promoted, by two competing groups.
Young people, pleasant but persistent and multi-lingual, wearing T-shirts of their group and carrying brochures describing the establishments, descend en masse on every traveler alighting from the cars in the slightly seedy train station.
These shills make their pitch - one group in one ear, the other group in the other - as you walk, slightly dazed to. . . well, to where? Might as well stop and listen.
They are offering free transportation to the hostel of your choice. Look it over. If you don't like it, we'll take you to another. And free transportation back to the station will probably be available when you leave. Can we help you with your bags?
Well, yes. Why not?
The hostel turns out to be an 18-story high-rise that is a college dormitory most of the year. Here in the heart of this former Soviet-bloc country, MTV is on - loud, of course - in the lounge. This planet is shrinking. Everyone seems to be speaking English, or trying to. The staff is particularly helpful. There's even a concierge of sorts.
Just hours ago, I was wondering what a first visit to a place like Budapest would be like. It's an awful lot like America, that's what.
My greatest regret in Budapest is that I JUST MISSED those newlyweds, Michael and Lisa Marie. But they probably wouldn't have stayed at my hostel anyway. ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN
From the lawn of the Lak Chalet in Switzerland, you can watch the
sun set magnificently over Lake Thun.
The village of Hawkshead, once frequented by poet William Wordsworth
and children's story writer Beatrix Potter, lies near the youth
hostel Esthwaite Lodge in England's Lake District.
Lake Chalet hostel at Leissigen, Switzerland, is in a prime location
for exploring the Bernase Oberland region of the Alps.
Esthwaite Lodge hostel typifies the classic Regency Period mansion.
From its windows guest can see the English countryside, as well as
the village of Hawkshead.
Cottsmore House hostel is in Burley, England, on the edge of the New
Forest, onetime hunting preserve of William the Conqueror.
by CNB