Stay for a real escape from it all; real log fires, real ales, no roads and no wifi! There are many interesting and crowd-free routes up Skiddaw, Blencathra, Great Calva and High Pike from the hostel. Skiddaw House is 3.5 miles from the nearest road but you don’t need to carry a heavy bag up here; there’s a shop selling everything you need to cook.
Come and visit this historic hostel on the shoulder of Skiddaw Mountain.
Skiddaw House was built as a Games Keeper lodge around 1860. The last residents moved out in 1970 and Skiddaw House began to decline. In 1986 it was leased by John Bothamley who created a full operating simple hostel and handed it over to the YHA. The YHA operated Skidddaw House hostel but by 2006 the House was again empty again. Martin Webster (the YHA warden from 1992 to 2000) started an initiative to reopened Skiddaw House and in April 2007 it opened as an independent hostel, affiliated to the YHA.
The old “Friends of Skiddaw House” group was reformed and incorporated early in 2007 as the Skiddaw House Foundation, a Registered Charity, with the declared aim of maintaining Skiddaw House as a hostel in the long term whilst retaining the principles of the YHA.
Find out more about Skiddaw House Hostel