A recent poke around the SYHA website revealed some sad news: hostel closures. In total, there have been 46 but 5 of them are facing closure. There's Canisbay near John O'Groats in Caithness, Arden near Loch Lomond and three in the Scottish Borders. These are Broadmeadows, Kirk Yetholm and Melrose. The latter losses will leave the network looking very bare between Scotland's central belt and its border with England.<\/p>\n
A weekend in early July had me staying in both Kirk Yetholm and Melrose. Both seemed well used though neither was completely full. Both are near long distance trails so that should explain their locations. St. Cuthbert's Way goes by both of these and that's how I chose them as places to stay. Kirk Yetholm also is the northern end of the Pennine Way and both the Southern Upland Way and and the Borders Abbeys Way pass Melrose. That makes both of these a big loss for long distance walkers who now need to make alternative arrangements unless others take them over and run as independent or affiliate hostels. After all, Melrose also is useful for cyclists.<\/p>\n
In the article on the SYHA website announcing the news, the reason given is one that will be eerily familiar to those who have witnessed YHA closure announcements. Yes, the cost of refurbishment has been mentioned in concert with the standards expected by hostellers these days. The upgrades to Oban and Lochranza are mentioned and I can vouch for the one on Arran being a good job. However, it sounds like it took a dedicated husband and wife team to make it happen.<\/p>\n
The announcement has me pondering the future of youth hostel associations and it's a line of thought that may spawn another entry on here regarding the subject yet. There are those who consider that youth hostels are on borrowed time. At Kirk Yetholm, I met a grandmother taking her grandchildren hostelling before she felt it was too late to do so. That Kirk Yetholm now is facing closure makes here views sound prophetic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A recent poke around the SYHA website revealed some sad news: hostel closures. In total, there have been 46 but 5 of them are facing closure. There’s Canisbay near John O’Groats in Caithness, Arden near Loch Lomond and three in the Scottish Borders. These are Broadmeadows, Kirk Yetholm and Melrose. The latter losses will leave […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,43,51,58,73,157,21,23,24,27,32],"tags":[537,223,222,2309,2308,775,364,252,2184,2082,2307,1463,267,512,2306,1467],"class_list":["post-1828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argyll","category-ayrshire","category-cycling","category-england","category-lothian-borders","category-scotland","category-southern-upland-way","category-st-cuthberts-way","category-stirling-district","category-times-and-seasons","category-walking","tag-arran","tag-counties-of-england","tag-geography-of-england","tag-john-ogroats","tag-kirk","tag-kirk-yetholm","tag-pennine-way","tag-scotland","tag-scottish-borders","tag-scottish-youth-hostels-association","tag-st-cuthberts-way","tag-tourism","tag-united-kingdom","tag-walking-in-the-united-kingdom","tag-yetholm","tag-youth-hostels-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.assortedexplorations.com\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}