News & Views for Local YHA Groups
Eskdale YH has received a £24,000 grant towards the cost of a biomass boiler, according to the News & Star. The handout came from the Lake District National Park Authority’s Sustainable Development Fund alongside 19 other green projects. Coming after work already done at Black Sail and Derwentwater, the Western Lakes appears to be a hot-spot for environmentally conscious hostelling!
Lockton Youth Hostel was amongst the winners of the White Rose Awards for Tourism, awarded each year by the Yorkshire Tourist Board and described as the region’s tourism “oscars”. The hostel won first prize in the Sustainable Tourism category. According to the YHA site:
[Lockton] is one of YHA’s first Green Beacon Youth Hostels featuring a rainwater harvesting system, live sedum roof, a compost toilet and photovoltaic cells.
You can read more about the awards in the York Press or on the Yorkshire Tourist Board website.
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.
Prominent on the front page of the YHA web site at the moment is a link to their Ennerdale and Black Sail Appeal, a £250,000 project to upgrade these two hostels in the light of future changes to the Ennerdale valley.
The Wild Ennerdale plan that is coming into play as Forestry Commission plantations are cleared calls for the valley to be returned to nature, with native broad leaf woodland replacing conifers. The forest track that currently allows supplies to be driven to Black Sail hostel will disappear, and the hostel will need to become more self-sufficient. Improvements will include solar and wind powered generators, and composting toilets. Supplies may be brought in by pony!
The campaign was given a boost this morning when Sir Chris Bonnington was interviewed about it on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme. A report later appeared on the BBC News web site.
A day’s walk away at Derwentwater YH they are also doing their bit for the environment. According to this BBC report they’ve just installed a turbine that will generate 40% of their electricity. Perhaps wisely, the system relies on rain, rather than on sunshine or wind, being powered by a beck which runs through the hostel grounds. As well as saving the planet, the scheme will save YHA £4000 a year in electricity bills.
If you wish, you can donate to the Black Sail appeal online.
According to The Guardian there are plans afoot to make YHA’s most isolated hostel into their most environmentally friendly:
The most remote mountain refuge in England is to test a sustainability plan that could see supplies depend on a two-hour trek on horse or by foot. Wind power, solar panels and green technology are expected to maintain the walkers’ and climbers’ foothold at Black Sail in the Lake District.
Have you ever stepped off a Lakeland path in order to avoid a muddy patch? If so, you’re adding to the problem of footpath erosion that’s blighting footpaths all over the Lake District National Park.
But help is at hand! Over at Fix the Fells they’re collecting the millions of pounds required to repair and maintain the well used network of footpaths across the District. Go there now and make a donation!