YHAgroup.org.uk

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.