a warm welcome from Sam the landlord of the Station Hotel in Knebworth and there Tuesday nights became club nights.
Hugh Chapman, Richard Watts and Ian Borrowman were new entrants in the early sixties. Another climbing group started up in Letchworth who used to go to Wales in an old ambulance. After a while we joined forces and Duncan Hector, John Wright and Bob and Rita Tarron were welcomed in, although the latter two were not married in those days.

As well as using the Coach House ourselves we used to take up parties from Stevenage Technical College where Colin Brice was a good friend. One day we took a group of these youngsters up the Watkin Path and over Snowdon. They were getting stroppy as we went down the Miners Track and although the Lakes was very high we decided to go across the flooded causeway. The water was deeper than we expected and some of the smaller ones were up to their thighs! A bit irresponsible in retrospect, but we and they all realised that hills are always worthy of respect.

After the merging of the Letchworth crowd we changed the name to Hertfordshire Mountaineering Club and so it has stayed.

Where else did we go? I remember climbing the Matterhorn and other Valais peaks with Geoff Clough, and we had a memorable New Year based in an HF House near Ballachulish. The snow was wonderful and we climbed all the Mamores, Ben Nevis and in Glen Coe, starting off and coming down in the dark to really couth accommodation where we could all have baths - better than any hut we had been in!

We had a meet in Steall Hut in Glen Nevis where it was wise to sleep on the top bunks to keep above the rats. After beers in the Argyll bar Bob James enjoyed the dancing in Corpach more than the rest of us so we left him and went back to Steall. After hitch hiking and walking back through the night he appeared as we were leaving the hut next morning and his rage knew no bounds!

Origins of the HMC by a surviving dinosaur of the early days -
Graham Daniels.
The founder and instigator of the Hertfordshire Mountaineering Club was Peter Spence, a likeable and persuasive marketing man, who live with his 2, 3 and then 4 children in Stevenage.

I became aware of him when I read an advert in the paper and shortly after, in 1958, I met the founding group in the sitting room of his house in Shephall Way. In that group were Geoff Clough, Robin King, Herrick Thwaite, Reg Boot and Graham Brown.

The first meets I remember were camping in the fields at the bottom of the Foxes Path to Cader Idris and then trips to the Rhinogs behind Harlech and the Arenegs where we had access problems with the farmer, also lighting problems as the battery on Robin King's old car gave out on the return journey. More often we camped at a farm beneath Little Tryfan in the Ogwen Valley.

Mostly we walked but I had the most rock climbing experience having learnt with the LSE Mountaineering Club at University. I had a Viking nylon rope and we mainly climbed on the east face of Tryfan and in the Llanberis path. Our only aids were slings and karabiners, we never had nuts, pegs, or other aids, so even a 70 foot lead on a v. diff was exciting.

Finding somewhere to stay in Wales was always a problem and early on Peter negotiated with a Mr Chamberlain, who rented a chalet from P.H.O. Williams a welsh farmer in Nant Gwynant, to rent the upper floor in the old coach house where he used the ground floor as a garage. We went there about once a month for several years and got to know the ways up and down Snowdon very well, particularly the Watkin Path. I recall one Christmas drinking ice cold Beaujolais while sitting in the coach house as close as possible to the cylindrical stove which was the only heating, with a lot of snow outside. 

New faces by 1960 included Bob James, Tim Farnell and Ian Robson. We gradually became more organised and called ourselves the North Herts Mountaineering Club. We held an AGM in the upstairs room of the Marquis of Lorne in Old Stevenage and at one point Bob James, the Chairman, had to retire under a hail of peanuts, as Abbott Ale was strong in those days! We also used the Roebuck, holding our first Annual Dinner there, but it was not long before we found