YHAgroup.org.uk

An invitation has been issued to affiliated groups to come to this year’s Groups’ Conference. Once again the venue will be National Forest YH, and once again Jeff Murry has been busy putting together an agenda:

Friday 26th March

19:00 onwards

Arrival and Registration

During evening

Meet and Greet / socialise

Saturday 27th March

8:30

Breakfast

9:00

Day delegates arrival and registration

9:30

Opening Address – Jeff Murry, COPSE

1. Welcome and introductions
2. Warden of National Forest YH
3. Order of Agenda

9:40

Apologies for absence

9:45

Minutes of Previous Conference (circulated to groups previously)

1. Accuracy (to be notified to Chairman prior to meeting)
2. Matters Arising from the minutes

9:55

Fundraising – John Adams

10:30

Tea / Coffee Break

11:00

Key Speaker – Caroline White, YHA Chief Executive

12:00

Lunch – provided by hostel

13:00

Election of Representatives to 2010 Company AGM

13:15

Presentation of Presidents Award – Paul Madge, Stafford Group

13:40

Winning Groups talk about the categories they won

14:00

Proposals for future Presidents Awards – Paul Madge, Stafford group

14:20

Constitution – Alan Summers, Leicester Group

15:00

Motions to 2009 Company AGM

15:30

Open Forum

15:50

Date of Next Conference / Closing Notices

16:00

Close

Sunday 28th March

10:00

Walk – 7-8 miles led by Leicester Group

As I noted last week, delegates should be able to take advantage of the YHA Bed Sale and stay for just £9.95 a night, making it a cheap weekend as well as (I’m sure) an interesting one. I’m particularly looking forward to hearing from Caroline White. It’ll be the Chief Executive’s first official contact with groups (and vice versa), and an important chance to make a good impression.

If you have a motion to submit to the AGM, or other comments on the agenda, you should contact Jeff by email. Of course, you should also feel free to leave a comment here!

Once again it’s time for hostelworld.com to publish their list of the world’s best hostels, gleaned from the ratings entered by their customers.

Top-rated hostel, for the second year running, is the Travellers House in Lisbon. The Portuguese capital seems to be the place to go hostelling – the top three hostels, and half of the top ten, are located in the city.

Closer to home, the best UK hostel (ranked 6th in the world) is the River House Backpackers in Cardiff. Tipped off about the award, The Guardian paid them a visit. It sounds great:

Our quarters are fitted out with a bunk bed (albeit a brand new one), sheet sleeping bags and a stripped wooden floor, which makes us feel less guilty about booking a twin room rather than a dorm.

Elsewhere, there are eight sparkling showers and loos, a spotless kitchen with all mod cons, and a patio out back where you can sit at a table with an endless supply of free tea and coffee. The TV room is packed with DVDs and a Wii, there’s a free internet, WiFi throughout, and the dining room is strewn with bowls piled high with fruit.

All for around the same price as the YHA alternative.

There’s good news for the YHA in the results too, though. London Central YH, which was in 9th place in the UK list last year, has risen to 8th place this year. Not a stellar performance perhaps, but steady progress in the right direction. Let’s hope they can rise further in the year ahead.

YHA are running a very attractive promotion, in which every dorm bed in the country is available for just £9.95 a night!

Just make your booking, via the web site or central booking, before 31st March using the special code 995Beds-en1. Oddly, there’s no mention of this offer on the YHA website’s front page or special offers page, why have a sale and not tell everyone about it? However, a little Googling soon turns up the full details.

If you’re looking for a way to use this offer, how about coming to the YHA Groups Conference at National Forest next month? £9.95 a night is less than half price!

One year after the plan to open a hostel in Berwick was announced by the YHA, The Journal reports that the main external construction work has been completed. This appears to have been no mean feat: the eighteenth century granary in which the hostel is to be sited has a bigger lean than the tower of Pisa.

Work can now continue to the next stage:

The organisations that will operate in the granary can now gain access and begin internal work. Interpretive panels are also to be put up to show how the granary operated and explain its significance to Berwick’s history and heritage, including one on a rail line within the site and the part it played in the whole operation.

All work should be completed by the autumn of this year and it is hoped the site will be open to the public early in 2011.

I’m glad to see information panels forming part of the plan: it’s a chance to make the most of a historic site, and I’ve seen them work really well at Whitby and Wooler for example.

Roll on 2011!

Writing in the Lonely Planet blog, Mark Broadhead is musing on what facilities a modern hostel should have. He reckons that…

In an ideal world, every hostel would…

1. Be clean
2. Have no more than 4 beds per dorm
3. Have en suite bathrooms
4. Be safe, with personal lockers
5. Have an outdoor and indoor communal area, preferably containing a ping-pong or foozball table
6. Pick me up from the airport or bus/train station by minivan
7. Have a large communal kitchen
8. Have a small bar at nights serving cheap local beverages
9. Have a laundry room
10. Have private bedrooms (for those tired of dorms)
11. Have a swimming pool (if necessary)
12. Have computers with internet access
13. Have free wi-fi
14. Be run by some friendly local staff
15. Be close to (or in) the city or in an interesting suburb/national park
16. Have someone on reception 24 hours a day

…and, finally, it should charge (at the very most) half the price that a night at a nearby, respectable, budget hotel would cost.

It’s quite a list, and one directed more at the international backpacking hosteller than the domestic hikers that we represent, but it’s food for thought. YHA are currently engaged in a process of “segmentation” – deciding what facilities different types of hostel ought to have, though they don’t appear to have asked the membership what they’d like.

So, now’s your chance, what do you think should be in an ideal hostel? What do you think should be in all of them?

My local group always had a soft spot for the old Hampstead Heath YH. A short jaunt from the end of the M1, you could dump your stuff and then get on the tube to central London. A day spent pounding the streets of the capital could be followed by one strolling around Hampstead Heath to round off the weekend before heading home.

Sadly the hostel closed in 2006, following a (probably correct) YHA decision to concentrate on sites closer to the centre of the city. However, now you have the opportunity to stay there again…

Country Life report that the property is on the market, having been split into six luxury properties (4 in the original building, 2 new ones built in the garden). The place, now called Wellgarth Manor, has been somewhat upgraded from its hostelling days:

All the joinery, fitted desks, dressers, bedside tables and wardrobes have been custom made. Spacious kitchens feature Poggenpohl units, stone work surfaces and Gaggennau appliances. Bathrooms have limestone flooring and walk-in showers. The master bathroom suites have his and her shower areas, Kaldewei baths with whirlpool Jacuzzi and chromatherapy systems. There is an integrated audio system throughout each property and Aquavision monitors can be found in the guest and master bathrooms.

All formal reception areas have hard word flooring. The properties feature cinema rooms with a bar, full High Definition projectors, screens with 17.1 surround sound and blu-ray players.

The price has gone up a bit too – prices range from £3,750,000 to £5,250,000. You could have stayed there for about 500 years for that money at YHA’s old overnight rates, albeit without the benefit of fancy kitchen units or tellys in the bathroom.

If you have that kind of money to spend, or just like to pretend that you have, take a look at this glossy brochure to see what’s on offer.

YHA have abandoned the rather clunky ResponseMX mapping software that they were using on their website in favour of the widely used Google Maps service.

Visitors can now pan, scroll, zoom in and out, and get a high quality map at each scale – rather than the grainy mess that the previous system sometimes provided. In addition, they can view a hostel’s position on a satellite photo – literally providing a picture of the surrounding countryside.

An important difference between the two services is that the old system’s tightest zoom was to an Ordnance Survey 1:25000 map, the new one zooms in to a regular street map. Lacking street names, the OS maps were almost useless for hostels in big towns, though other details gave them the edge in rural locations. However, by using the satellite view, the would-be hosteller can usually compensate for any shortcomings of the street map.

One or two hostels will be ill-served by the change in mapping. Tanners Hatch is one example where the new map gives very little help in finding the place, I’m sure there are others. I think the YHA should supplement the regular map with a sketch map to help in getting to these really hard-to-find places.

That issue notwithstanding, I think this is a big improvement to the YHA web site and one that should be welcomed (and not just because I suggested it last year!).

Hostelling International have announced a list of the world’s best hostels, based on the votes of visitors to their website. The winners are:

• Best Hostel 2009: HI Baan Dinso, Bangkok, Thailand
• Friendliest Hostel 2009: Tønsberg, Norway
• Most Comfortable Hostel 2009: Kyoto – Utano, Japan
• Most Efficient Hostel 2009: Eastham (Mid Cape), USA
• Cleanest Hostel 2009: Grindelwald, Switzerland
• Best Hostel Country 2009 – Luxembourg

The awards are based on the customer ratings in each category, as entered by people who booked hostels through the HI site (you can’t vote if you booked in some other way). Hostels also needed to have had at least 50 votes between 1st November 2008 and 1st October 2009.

Unlike the “HOSCARs”, there’s no continent-by-continent breakdown, so it’s hard to tell how far down the leaderboard the YHA’s hostels are. Maybe, with the benefit of a full year’s votes, could we see one of YHA’s London flagships on this list next year?

Inspired by doings up the road in Wooler and Berwick, a community group is seeking to open a youth hostel in Alnwick. The Alnwick Community Development Trust have their eyes on a Grade II listed former Social Services office for conversion into a 60-bed hostel, according to the Northumberland Gazette.

Country Life once described Alnwick as the best place to live in Britain, noting “its location between some of England’s finest open hill-country to the west, and most impressive coastline to the east”. The town is dominated by Alnwick Castle which featured as Hogwarts in the first two Harry Potter movies. If you have other literary tastes, the town’s also home to one of Britain’s biggest second hand bookshops.

All in all a promising place for a youth hostel. Grant applications are being considered over the next few weeks, to be followed by talks with YHA about operating the place. It could be a wizard place to stay!

Anybody who has been watching the news this weekend will be aware of the extraordinary floods that have struck Cumbria this weekend.

Whilst the greatest amount of sympathy must be reserved for those whose homes have fallen victim to the waters, hostellers will be concerned about the fate of the many well-loved hostels located around the region.

Official news from the YHA is slow in appearing, but this note has been published on the Lake District hostels page:

Severe weather and flooding has affected the Lake District. Due to the flooding the services offered at YHA Ambleside, YHA Buttermere, YHA Cockermouth, and YHA Coniston Coppermines have unfortunately been disrupted. Guests with bookings for these Youth Hostels have been contacted.

Police are asking people not to travel to some parts of the Lake District unless absolutely necessary. Please check with the police and local authorities before travelling to affected areas. YHA is really grateful to guests and members for their continuing support.

The situation is changing rapidly and guests with bookings are advised to call 01629 592700 for more information.

Of the four hostels mentioned, Buttermere and Coniston Coppermines both seem high above any likely source of flood damage. Presumably it is approach roads and suspect bridges that are the problem here.

According to a post from a staffer in the YHA forum, Ambleside’s basement has flooded, leading to a loss of power and heating in the hostel. Once the level of the lake has fallen again, it should be possible to re-open the hostel pretty swiftly.

Which just leaves Cockermouth YH. Sitting as it does on the banks of the River Cocker (it’s a converted water mill), it must have been very severely damaged in the record floods which have devastated the town. It may take a fundraising appeal similar to the one for Boscastle to get it going again.

Elsewhere in the district, the BBC have a picture of flood waters just inches from the door of Keswick YH, but the hostel remains open.

More news will be published here as I hear of it.