West Bromwich Mountaineering Club

West Bromwich Mountaineering Club (WBMC) is one of the oldest and most active climbing and hill-walking clubs in the West Midlands. It meets at "The Wheatsheaf" on West Bromwich High Street every Thursday night, holding a series of talks on the second Thursday of the month in winter. It has a membership of almost 300 and every month runs a coach to a mountainous region in England or Wales, on which seats are available to its members and the general public on a 'first come - first served' basis and also maintains a members-only hut in the Nant Gwynant valley. It affiliated to the British Mountaineering Council in 2003 and became a Community Association Sports Club (CASC) in 2005.

Early in 1951 Bert Wright, a member of the Climbers' Club, was asked by his Local Education Authority to develop camping trips & outdoor activities for local schoolchildren. At that time there were only 3 outdoor centres in the whole country and no certificates of mountain leadership of any kind, so he set about organising mountaineering courses for schoolteachers based at Helyg and Ynys Ettws huts in Snowdonia. The idea of forming a mountaineering club in West Bromwich materialised while participants socialised at The Royal Hotel (now Plas y Brenin) and the Pen-y-Gwryd. The first meet was to the Long Mynd on 13 January 1952, the first committee meeting on 23 May and the inaugural Annual General Meeting held at the Arden Hotel on 16 October 1952, at which Wright became the first chairman. The "Star and Garter" was the club's first home until it moved to "The Globe" in 1959 where it has remained until September 2012 apart from brief spells at "The Flowerpot" and "Merry Go Round". Sir Chris Bonington contributed the forward to a book published in 2002 celebrating the club's golden jubilee. The group produces a monthly newsletter and copies of these going back to 1989 have been deposited with Sandwell Community History and Archives Service at Smethwick Library and can be consulted there.

...
Wikipedia