Hotpot! no_3 - YHA Penzance, YHA Youlgreave (Or 'The Ones I forgot')

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 more astute family member.

The oversight is no judgement on the quality of the hostels, nor have I suppressed painful memories from my visits. It does, however, mean that I don’t have too much to say about either of them. But now that my memory is suitably jogged, I am giving it the old college try.

YHA Penzance is a lovely Georgian building (named Castle Horneck, I have recently discovered) on the outskirts of the town of Penzance. It is well-situated near all kinds of famous Cornish attractions, of which St. Michael’s Mount, the Minack Theatre at Porthcurno, and Land’s End loom largest in my mind. It is also an ideal stopover on the way to the Isles of Scilly, which is the capacity in which we enjoyed it during our family trip there, many moons ago.

YHA Youlgreave was once the Co-op store for the village in the Peaks, and has a very attractive facade (and roomy interiors, to use my best estate agent-speak). There are plenty of nice, wooded valley walks around the hostel itself, and Chatsworth is a very short drive away, also boasting plenty of scenic pathways, among its other manifold delights. For those interested in a deep dive into the history of the YHA’s youth hostels, including those in the Youlgreave area, John Martin, the YHA’s volunteer archivist, writes engagingly on the subject in profiles compiled on this website. A link to this website is also provided in the ‘External Resources’ page.

This blog will continue on a fortnightly basis this year. There are plenty more adventures to be had for us all!

Happy New Year,

Matt