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...