TOURING CLUB

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 December 1938, Page 9

TOURING CLUB

THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND MEMBERS. ASSISTANCE TO TRAVELLERS. French newspapers have just announced that the Touring Club de France has now reached a membership of 300,000. The Touring Club de France was founded in 1890, originally in the interest of cyclists, on the lines of the British Cyclist Touring Club. From cycling its activities spread to every form of tourist travel and outdoor exercise exclusive of games. Its membership reached 100,000 in 1906, 200,000 in 1926 and 300,000 this summer. Members pay an annual subscription of 35 francs (45 francs —sshillings—for members living outside France) and they receive a monthly publication of 32 pages containing numerous illustrated articles pointing out the beauty- spots of France as well as a review of the activities of the association.

Non-political in character, the Touring Club de France is able to make the opinion of its member felt when any question concerning travel comes before parliament. Its role, however, is not merely critical, and few associations throughout the world have been able to achieve so much by their own efforts. One of the great works of the Touring Club de France has been the setting up of signs pointing out beauty spots and places of interest, as well as orientation tables erected on scores of mountains or other elevated positions showing by direction lines distances and heights of points in sight. It has also helped in the restoration of ancient buildings falling into ruin, and in the improvement and upkeep of roads in out of the way places. Mountain refuges for climbers have been created in hundreds by it. The sections of the Touring Club de France are many. Specialists are at the head of its different departments to advise members, personally or by post, as to places to be visited and itineraries. Besides the monthly review, it publishes scores of' road maps for cyclists and automobilists as well as river maps for canoeists. Its members in different parts of France make group excursions, and motor rallies, cyclist rallies, canoeist rallies, even airplane rallies, are held under its auspices. It sponsors no sporting events, and there are no cup hunters among its members, but there is a camaraderie which makes every tourist a friend of every other whether he trudges along the roads of France wearing only a little sign in his button-hole, or his car carries it in larger dimensions on the bonnet, or the pennant on the prow of his canoe displays it fluttering above the rapid stream.

Membership of this great organisation carries with it appreciable advantages in the shape of reduced entrance fees to many museums and exhibitions and a reduction on the hotel bill at every hotel recommended by the TCF. The Touring Club de France has carried out many a crusade. Among the most recent is that for the abolition of roadside advertisement signs. Its members are proud of a beautiful country which they mean to maintain unmarred by ugliness, for their own pleasure and for that of the visitor from other lands.