r/yorkshire

Looking at buying a house here. We’d like to move to a surrounding area to York, and we will be driving to York for work twice a week. Looking for somewhere peaceful with a few pretty woods etc. nearby for walking our dog. TIA

Hi, can anyone recommend a good body piercer in South Yorkshire? Or West Yorkshire?

American here who's an old man now that was adopted at birth and never knew anything about my biological family.

I finally took a DNA test and discovered my great grandfather left England and came here in 1637. His last name was Wentworth and apparently had ties to Yorkshire.

So I have been lurking here a few months checking out all the posts and I must say you guys are great !

The subreddit posts for other cities that i belong to are always complaining about somthing, but all i see here are lovely pictures, and everyone talking about how much they like Yorkshire.

So i just wanted to say, love you all and keep up the positive posts. This world we live in now needs more of that.

The YHA is trying to keep this quiet but they're about to close YHA Grinton Lodge in about a month's time having sold it off - sale price unknown but asking was £0.95 million. Lovely youth hostel in a beautiful setting and a real shame it's doomed. Doubt there's anything that can be done to stop this at such a late stage but spread the word just in case! And maybe visit for one last time if you've never been. It's a glorious location. Link: https://www.yha.org.uk/hostel/yha-grinton-lodge

Apparently the new owner intends to turn it into a wedding venue. This will likely require a planning permission application, so if you're unhappy about that keep your eye on the planning register (here: https://planning.richmondshire.gov.uk/online-applications/search.do?action=simple&searchType=Application and the postcode is DL11 6HS) and if enough people object to any proposed change, the new owners might have to keep it as a youth hostel.

As for *why* it's selling, I understand the YHA is in serious financial trouble due to some unwise investments including an expensive London youth hostel which they had to sell at a massive loss, carrying a heavy debt burden and ominously the business as a whole typically operating at an annual loss for many years. Grinton Lodge also needs very expensive renovations and itself makes a loss each year (despite getting the benefits of business rate reductions and no VAT from being a charity).

YHA current strategy is sell off a bunch of their youth hostels each year just to pay the bills until either (i) they start making profits again (they had a 5 year turnaround plan following Covid in 2020 which has spectacularly failed) or (ii) they run out of youth hostels to sell and maybe eventually even shut down.

YHA used to have several hundreds of hostels; under 100 left now (some franchised) and of which they're selling 10% just this summer, with more sales planned. Very sad.