News & Views for Local YHA Groups
It’s not often that the youth hostel movement gets 20 minutes’ discussion on national radio (well, national to Scotland anyway), so I thought I’d preserve Wednesday’s coverage in the form of a transcript. Scotland Live airs every weekday lunchtime on Radio Scotland and is presented by Mhairi Stuart, here’s what they had to say about hostel closures… Continue reading…
The projected closure of seven SYHA hostels has attracted some attention in the media. As well as several letters written to The Herald and a report on the BBC News website, the story was featured at length on Radio Scotland’s Scotland Live programme yesterday.
For the next six days you can “listen again” to the whole programme, the report begins about 24 minutes in and includes an interview with Keith Legge, Chief Executive of SYHA, a report from Killin about the feared effect of the hostel closing there, and a talk with Marilyn Barrack of the Elenydd Trust about how they saved T’yn Cornel and Dolgoch and whether the same apporach might work in Scotland. The whole report lasts 20 minutes and besides the odd gag about “bobble hats” gives the whole issue a fair going over.
Viewed from south of the border, the whole situation seems sadly familiar. In many a YHA common room you’ll hear Scotland described as the promised land, where the wily old SYHA have resisted the temptation to excessively “do up” their hostels and kept the sacred flame of simple hostelling alive. Well, now it seems that the Scots are meeting the same problems as the rest of us, coming up with some of the same solutions, resulting in the same response from the membership. We can only wait to see what happens next.
Until recently, this network of “stone tents” in the Lake District was managed by the YHA. Now they’ve gone independent, and have a slick website to sell their services. Each of the twelve barns is extensively photographed and described, and availability can be checked online for the next twelve months.
If you’re looking for somewhere simple to stay in the Lakes, these could be just the job.