YHAgroup.org.uk

A long report in the Northern Echo profiles Blackton Grange Development Centre - formerly known as Baldersdale Youth Hostel until its closure last year. The hostel was closed because of falling visitor numbers and the need for investment, the new owners have provided plenty of the latter: £55,000 spent so far, with a further £200,000 to come.

Inside, the centre still has the familiar bunk beds but with new bedding and fluffy towels in freshly painted rooms. […] Meals are eaten in the blue painted kitchen dining room, complete with its original red quarry tiles from its days as a farm. Downstairs, the lounge has been repainted in cosy reds, the perfect accompaniment to the huge stone fireplace which keeps the room warm during the harsh Teesdale winters. It has a flat screen television in one corner

This plush new resting place on the Pennine Way is primarily aimed at the corporate market - teams of jaded executives learning teamwork skills by heading for the outdoors and being rained on together. The 37-bedded hostel has to be booked in its entirety, so it’s no longer really open to individual hostellers. However, the £750 price tag for a weekend in the off season may be attractive to some of the larger YHA groups looking for somewhere different.

The Blackton Grange website has full details of the place for anybody seeking further information.

A group of environmentally minded Londoners are attempting to save Ivinghoe youth hostel, according to a report in Hemel Hempstead Today. Their intention is to convert part of the hostel into an environmentally friendly communal living area, whilst retaining the rest of it as a hostel. A scheme to make a reality TV show about the whole enterprise has (mercifully) been shelved.

Plans are “still in the very early stages” (they’d better get a move on as the place closes at the end of September!), so it is not known whether the putative hostel would remain in the YHA network or not.