Journey of the Hosteller

What use is a blog with no content to fill it? As I near the end of my list of visited hostels, I am confronted with just such a question. Although I can cheerfully postpone my reckoning through today’s featurette on YHA Ingleton and Mankinholes, I must also look to the future (now it’s only just begun). What does it hold? With any luck, even more fruitful YHA visits. But since I can’t count on getaways to new hostels to continue apace, content may become in ever-decreasing supply. So what use, this blog? O, reason not the need!, as capricious crackpot and unlikeliest recipient of a ‘World’s Best Dad’ mug Lear might say. Let’s make hay while the sun shines. The treachery of memory forces me to brevity when it comes to YHA Ingleton, located in the Yorkshire Dales. In the halcyon days of my youth, my family visited the hostel during an especially rainy week. My principal memories from our walks there were the unusually powerful waterfalls along the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail . Visiting ag...

A rare moment of sun in the Rye Valley. Autumn: a time of contemplation, of schoolyard memories, of last-minute getaways, but principally, a time of rain. This is how an English summer dies. And yet, between the August showers of 2023, there were walks to be had aplenty. Gentle perambulations in the gentle sun - when it graced us with its fleeting presence. The picturesque North Yorkshire village of Helmsley, replete with historical attractions, played host to my late-summer venture. Since the Norman era, Helmsley has boasted a castle in various materials and states of construction. The final iteration, left in ruins from the English Civil War, looms commandingly over the village, and the walk from there to Rievaulx Abbey, sorry victim of the Dissolution of the Monasteries , is short and sweet, winding through rolling hill and dale. Byland Abbey, a fellow casualty of Henry VIII's infamous decrees, is also only a couple of hours walk south west. Helmsley Castle, Rievaulx Abbey and t...

The cliffs between Robin Hood’s Bay and Ravenscar, looking south. I n early January, the cold still had its claws sunk deep into the Yorkshire soil. April may be the cruellest month (an assertion that I still find doubtful, sorry T.S.), but January is often the bleakest. With the cold of the start of the year, however, comes the dramatic low winter Sun that makes walking a delight. As you may have noticed, I will never stop extolling the photogenic virtues of that light. Ravenscar was a childhood mainstay of mine, and I have fond memories of fossil-hunting along this particularly rich stretch of the Jurassic Coast. When the tide allows, there is ample opportunity for seal-watching (from a respectful distance, of course), as they bask on an outcropping just away from the headland (‘South Cheek’, on Google Maps - I confess I have never heard it referred to as such). On this visit, however, the tide wouldn’t allow for beach access without approaching the seals too closely. There are a mul...

Top Withens, as viewed from a crook by a creek. January’s chill (and what a chill it is even now, here in the UK) could not deter my thirst for good walking. So it was that my partner and I ventured out into the frosty landscape, bound for the wily, windy moors. For this is, of course, Brontë country. YHA Haworth, in the West Yorkshire village made famous for its association with that literary family, is a grand Victorian Gothic mansion, with all the trappings of former wealth you might expect from a building of that era. Painted glass and ornately carved oaken inner balconies abound. As undeniably beautiful as the building itself is, the surrounding moor surpasses it. The first evening of our short stay, we gained our bearings and explored Penistone Hill, Lower Laithe Reservoir, and the village itself, even spotting the heritage steam train (the 45212 LMS ‘Black 5’ to be precise) on its way from Haworth station on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway line. The walking routes are v...

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Well, perhaps. If I were to compare my blog posts to the filmography of Nicolas Cage, as my wandering mind dictates that I must, today's entry would have no more natural a fit than Gone in 60 Seconds . Just as the world breathed a collective sigh of relief to have avoided the millennium bug, and greeted with grateful tears that Nicolas Cage vehicle(!), so too must you welcome this flight of fancy disguised as a blog post about YHA Penzance and YHA Youlgreave after the tumult of more detailed entries. Let us start 2025 with a whimsical energy, guaranteed to never wear. “But why?” I hear you ask. “Why these two in particular?” But your question is answered only by an enigmatic smile, that to the viewer schooled in the human condition (or to those who have read the title) suggests that the solution is simple: I simply forgot that I had visited these two hostels. Their inclusion was recently kindly recommended to me by a mo...

Swaledale, viewed from a path along the south side of the valley. There has been entirely too much gallivanting about in the South of late. Time for a little grounded Yorkshire reality, just in time for Christmas, in the unparalleled, unpretentious beauty of the Yorkshire Dales. In April 2023, the time was right for a more local ramble. The weather was not in my favour, but neither wind nor rain (nor indeed heat, nor gloom of night) could stay me from my appointed rounds, as I might refer to my walks were I so inclined. Accordingly, I laced up my boots and set off to YHA Grinton Lodge. The journey there required a stop at the historic town of Richmond, which is the one with a castle atop an impressive cliff, lest you confuse it with the area of London of the same name. From Richmond, the little number 30 bus took me to the almost equally little village of Grinton, from which the hostel is a short walk up the hill. The view down the hill on the road between the hostel and the village. T...