It will be 35 years of continuous activity when The Backpackers Club meet at Bellingham in April 2007. It all began when the Club was launched at The Camping & Outdoor Leisure Show - COLEX - being held at Olympia in London just after New Year 1972.
That was a year when the Labour Party was in Opposition, Harold Wilson came and cut the ribbon to let in the eager hordes. He was snapped on the Practical Camper magazine stand in a picture that shows Club co-founder Mike Marriott trying to get him to join the Club! Later on Harold Wilson was to receive the Club’s nominated gift of a Karrimnor Tatra rucksack – in red of course - for his ambling around the Isles of Scilly, where he spent some of his outdoor leisure time.

Backpackers Club first national organiser and secretary Dennis Noble, right, with Club co-founder and Practical Camper magazine editor Peter Lumley

It so happened that Robert Saunders had just launched their Lite Hike model, a well under 3lb solo tent, so four backpackers took four tents on a four night autumn trek, trying out some of the clothing and equipment that was to be introduced to the new emerging market - backpacking had arrived!
On the trek with Mike Marriott and Peter Lumley were George Raven, partner in Mike’s Sandwich, Kent, camping store Practical Camper, with the magazine assistant editor Fred Dawkins making up the quartet.
A photograph of George walking across one of the Lawns in the New Forest on this trip was sketched into the image of a backpacker that has since been the centrepiece of The Backpackers Club badge.

The Practical Camper publishers, Haymarket Press, supported and sponsored the Club from the very first mention of the word backpacking.
It turned out that magazine editor Peter Lumley and his lead contributor Mike Marriott didn’t have to work so very hard to persuade the publishers that backpacking was going to become a big part of the British camping scene. Up to then was very much a summer affair, and backpacking activity was going to help fill the pages and interest readers through the darker months of the year.
So do backpackers do it best by candlelight, one could ask. The launch package that Haymarket contributed included quality printed promotional leaflets, membership cards, letterheads, the notable square Club badge and other trappings to help Dennis Noble, the Club’s first secretary and organizer, to present the Club as a professional body, and he was very enthusiastic with it too!
On the COLEX weekend in January 1972, when The Backpackers Club was about to make the entry into the wide public domain, one more character joined party in the drive to make backpacking the number one outdoor activity - Derrick Booth.
Being the professional journalist he was, he’d made an early visit to the Press Office at COLEX and became an instant supporter of the magazine’s initiative. Derrick had just returned from another trip to America, where among his contacts and friends was the Phoenix based Camp Trails company. They made rucksacks like had never been seen on sale in Britain, and of all the icons that have marked the progression of the backpacking movement in this country, it must be the Ponderosa rucksack on a 515 Astral Cruiser frame that still turns heads.

Across the road from the Olympia exhibition complex there was - and possibly still is - an Indian restaurant called The Hunza. Just six of us sat down around the table and talked gear, trips, ideas to attract a following so that the backpacking movement could grow along the environmentally friendly pathways that figured so much in the writings of the very first Club president, the renowned author John Hillaby.
Remember his book “Journey through Britain” - that’s the activity that keeps so many members of The Backpackers Club happy today. We all welcome you to come join the fun, join the Club. You will find there are a lot of very friendly people helping you take to the trails with your rucksack and a tent. Be a backpacker!
Peter Lumley  December 2006