Have you considered staying in a youth hostel with kids? Me neither but we did last week and it was a great experience!
For the last few years we’ve been camping in the Lake District And we’ve had a great time despite the inevitable rain that always starts up as soon as we get the tent down from the loft.
I know I’ve mentioned it on here before, but we have a great campaign setup with a huge eight man tent that we bought from Facebook marketplace, a porch extension extension to the tent and a big gazebo that gives us even more space.
It does take a little while to set up though, so when we only had a spare three nights we decided to do things a little bit differently this year and we booked a ready erected bell tent at YHA Hawkshead which is the youth hostel just outside of Ambleside in the Lakes.
We hadn’t even remotely considered booking a youth hostel but when I was looking through what was available on Booking.com, these bell tents came up and the majority of their reviews pointed to the fact that it was a great place for families with young children.
We did lots of research and even rang the hostel to make sure that it would be a suitable place for us to stay and in the end we decided to book one of the bell tents in the grounds.
We didn’t book through booking.com though as the YHA website offered as a cheaper price which became even cheaper with the discount we got for becoming a member.
The tent we booked came with a double bed, two single beds, a wood burner store and outside we had our own picnic table and fire pit which we thought sounded ideal.
It wasn’t super cheap but with our member discount, it did come to less than £300 for 3 nights.
Based on the description on the website, it sounded like a great value way to take the kids camping without the hassle and time at the start and end of the trip setting up and putting away when our time was so limited.
Check in at the hostel isn’t until 5pm, in fact reception doesn’t even open until 5pm as the staff who man reception are also the staff who do the cleaning and all of the other jobs around the site. We got there around 4pm and planned to just let the kids play in the grounds with some of the outdoor toys we’d taken but there was someone tidying around the reception area who very kindly checked us in early.
Our tent was even better than we expected with solar powered fairy lights around the outside and a lovely bright light, also powered with solar energy. In addition to the beds and woodburner that we’d been expecting, there was also a big wooden box to store things in and a power point that had USB sockets so we could charge our phones. All brilliant features but to be used sparingly as we discovered because the solar power was definitely limited and once used up, we had to wait until the next day for it to charge again.
The wood burner stove was a brilliant touch with enough wood supplied to last for one night which ‘should’ have been enough for a three night break in August, right? It actually wasn’t enough thanks to the torrential rain and wind we got on two of the three nights but we bought logs from the supermarket rather than in the hostel itself as the packs for one night’s wood supply cost £10 which felt like a lot.
There was plenty of space in the grounds between the tents and the majority of the ten bell tents were filled with families of all nationalities which meant we had some great conversations with our neighbours whilst roasting marshmallows on a night – which apparently isn’t a skill I possess.
The hostel itself was in the main house where there was a lounge, a games room, a dining room with a reasonably priced restaurant (kids ate for £1 while we were there), a couple of fully equipped kitchens where we could cook and a couple of dining rooms where we could eat when it was raining. There was also plenty of showers and toilets both inside and outside.
It was great to be able to use all the facilities and to be able to go inside and relax but I won’t lie, it needed a really good clean inside the main house. Our tent was spotless and that was the main thing to me because we barely needed anything from the house but I can see why the hostel itself was so cheap, they clearly didn’t spend much of their budget on cleaning.
Overall, we had the best time here and the tent was everything we wanted and more.
The bell tents at the hostel were exactly what we were looking for and the fact that we could use the facilities in the hostel itself was an added bonus that we realistically could have easily done without as we had everything we needed in the tent. The atmosphere in the hostel was great for families and I wouldn’t hesitate to stay in one again both on our own as a couple and with the kids.
And the Lakes District, as a destination for a camping trip – this picture says it all…
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