A rambler wants to uncover the mysteries of a long-lost walking group.
Michael Smith, the former president of the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club, is keen to find out more about Dewsbury’s Excelsior Tourist Club, which was active during the 1870s.
His intrigue was sparked when he came across the group’s sticker and two accompanying names of Spiking and Spedding in an old visitors’ book at the Klingenberg Hotel in Årdalstangen, a village deep in the fjord region of Norway which is popular with anglers and mountaineers.
He hopes to find out about the group, of which there are no known records, so it can be included in a feature on the book for the Yorkshire Rambling Club journal.
Michael said: “I was out there for a meeting and was just browsing through the hotel’s register when I came across the club’s name with the date July 1879.
“It said that Spiking was the President and Robert Spedding the acting guide
“The book really interested me so I took photos of each page and have been able to find some information about the other names and clubs on the register already but haven’t been able to find anything about this group.
“I’m really curious to know if it was an actual group or just one guy and his mate who went there for an adventure.”
Some of the other signatures came from known mountaineers and academics.
Michael said: “I know that father of Norwegian mountaineering and Yorkshire man William Cecil Slingsby had been there. Almost 140 years ago he made the first ascent of Storen, then believed to be Norway’s highest mountain.
“Someone in the Olympic rowing team and academics are also included.
“Anyone who went up there at that time needed to have had money and time to spare because typically tourists would spend a night in the old Klingenberg Hotel, be rowed across the inland lake and walk along the narrow rocky steep-sided valley to the hamlet of Vetti and stay the night.
“Just beyond that they could visit the bottom, or if more adventurous, the top of Vettisfossen, one of Norway’s tallest waterfalls with a 902ft uninterrupted drop.
“This is probably what Spiking and Spedding did though they may have continued to Vormeli if looking for mountaineering.”
He added: “The area has a dramatic landscape and it would have been very hard for them to traverse at the time.
“While ramblers can now use paths they will have had to scramble up boulders.
“It would be great if I could track down information before the anniversary of Slingsby’s ascent next year.”
Anyone who has any information on the Excelsior Tourist Club can email Michael at smithjura@hotmail.com or call him on 07814 010165.
