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According to a report in Matlock Today, YHA have found buyers for both these Peak District hostels, which were amongst the 32 identified for closure last year. The identity of the buyer(s) is not known, nor is the price that they paid, but the Association was hoping to get between £800,000 and £850,000 for the sale of the two buildings.

Both hostels will remain open until the end of September, and YHA have stated their intention to open replacement hostels in the two towns. Hopefully they’ll be successful in finding somewhere suitable before too long.

At a time when YHA England & Wales sometimes seem to be reducing their support for affiliated and local groups, north of the border things are going the other way.

YHA groups as we know them do not currently exist in Scotland, but the SYHA is taking active steps to get some going. A full page advert in their house magazine Scottish Hosteller (of which more in a later post…), and a page on the SYHA web site invite members to join up:

A New network of SYHA Members Groups is being established, to give members the opportunity to support the Association while taking part in a range of activities and events. The groups will be open to all members and we hope that as many as possible will join.

This is your opportunity to become more involved with the SYHA, joining with like minded members to help take the Association forward, while having some fun along the way.

Interestingly, the as-yet-non-existant Scottish groups already have places reserved for them on the Association’s new governing Council. Down south, we don’t yet know whether our representation at the England and Wales equivalent will survive the Purkiss review.

The latest edition of Get Involved, YHA’s email newsletter:

Dear Supporter

Welcome to Get Involved, YHA’s newsletter for members and supporters. Here, we aim to tell you how you can become more involved with YHA through taking part in governance, volunteering or fund-raising as well as keeping you up to date with changes in the YHA network.

Governance Review latest

Proposals for changing the way YHA is run have now been drawn up by Dr Andrew Purkis following the completion of his wide ranging Governance Review. More

Help at hand

Supporters looking to leave a legacy so that future generations can explore England and Wales with YHA are being offered guidance at a series of Supporters’ Days.

These events offer an opportunity to visit parts of the YHA network and find out what the plans are for the future, while enabling us to thank loyal supporters for their continued support. More

Walk this way

YHA is hiking up the chances of disadvantaged children enjoying a trip away from home by hosting a sponsored walk challenge weekend.

The impressive Gothic Manor, YHA Ilam Hall will be the venue for the event, which takes place on Saturday September 8.

All proceeds from the day go to Breaks 4 Kids, YHA’s fund that provides grants so young people who cannot afford to join their friends on trips are not left behind. More

Volunteer for Do it 4 Real

Thanks to the success of the Do It 4 Real Summer Camps in the past two years, YHA is looking for enthusiastic volunteers to take on camp counsellor roles in 2007. More

Regional Council Dates

Find out more about what YHA’s up to in your region by attending your Regional Council meetings.

Meetings are held every three months at hostel sites. Click here for times and dates of forthcoming meetings.

If you would like to receive this newsletter yourself, you can register here

A review of the newly refurbished Whitby youth hostel appeared in this Saturday’s Guardian. The spectacular location of the hostel particularly impressed their reporter:

If location was all that mattered, the best hotel in Britain might very well be Whitby youth hostel. The hostel - it opened a few weeks ago - sits on one of the most magnificent headlands in the country. Below it, the pastel-hued rooftops of the town are spread out, while the North Sea crashes impressively beyond the harbour wall.

She was less impressed by the “too hard and too narrow” beds and the “painfully spartan” bedrooms, but those are the only bad points in a generally gushing review. Expect an influx of Guardian-reading families to the North Yorkshire coast!

A point made in the review that may interest groups regards catering arrangements:

The dining arrangements, for example, are perfect: the hostel has a very well-equipped self-catering kitchen, and it’s not only much cheaper, but often also much easier, to feed young children the kind of food they have at home.

I do hope high-ups at YHA take note of this particular point. The availability of self-catering facilities is one of YHA’s unique selling points. In all too many places the Members’ Kitchen seems to be being run down in pursuit of increased meal sales. It’s good to hear that a flagship like Whitby is not following this worrying trend.

The Malvern Gazette reports that the former Malvern youth hostel, which closed last year, is to be turned into seven flats, and that three houses will occupy the hostel grounds. That sounds like quite a squeeze!

Meanwhile, the YHA are looking for a replacement hostel, though without success as yet:

“We haven’t identified any new sites, it’s not on our priority list for this year,” said YHA regional manager Charlotte Judson this week. “However, it is a priority on our five-year plan.

“We’ve started discussions with a number of people and organisations, but nothing has come to fruition yet.”

If you’re heading north to tick off some more of Sir Hugh Munro’s list of 3,000-foot mountains, you could do worse than check out Munro Magic first.

All 284 Munros & 220 Corbetts are covered in detail including descriptions, pictures, location maps, walking routes and weather reports, as well as listings of nearby accommodation in which to rest up afterwards.

One of my criticisms of the new YHA web site was the picture they were using on the home page. As I stated in my review back in January, whilst many of the photos on the site are excellent, they chose a “slightly wonky, slightly blurry” shot of Oxford YH to front the site.

Well, not any more! Somebody must have been listening, as there’s now a stunning aerial photograph of Lizard YH which really shows off the extraordinary kinds of places you can stay at as a hosteller. Bravo YHA!