This club started life as the IC YHA in the early years of the twentieth century. The club took advantage of the numerous cheap hostels in scenic parts of the country, but did not restrict themselves to hiking. Some weekend breaks involved cycling and some didn’t seem to involve much at all! Students of eighty or ninety years ago still needed to get of London. Of course, way back then, ICU didn’t own any minibuses, so the club travelled by train – not a pleasant prospect for us now. Gradually the club evolved until the early 90s when the club changed to the Fellwanderers to reflect the present day activities of the club. To those of you not entirely familiar with the term, a fell is a northern word for hill.
The club exchanged mainly YHA activities for mainly walking activities. We still use the occasional hostel, but have evolved to use tents, camping barns and mountain huts where appropriate. For many years, the club has used only minibuses on weekend trips, both to keep costs and journey times down and to allow us to get to out of town venues.
For the last few years, Imperial has gone through some changes, and so has the Fellwanderers. Integration of St. Marys medical school has given us access to the Snowdon mountain hut and allowed medics to join our club. We expect more changes in the next few years both due to college, and off our own backs.