Saddle Mountain Hostel is another year older today. Happy 11th birthday to us! It’s hard to believe that another year has gone by but it’s true. Time flies when you’re busy!
Last year the school staying at the hostel gave us a lovely surprise by presenting us with a birthday card, cake complete with candle and an impromptu rendition of “Happy Birthday” to celebrate turning 10.
For this year’s birthday we are joined by the same teacher (who seems to have become a regular on our birthdays) leading a new set of pupils. No pressure, honestly! We certainly won’t be overdoing the partying as they check out tomorrow morning and it will be a race against time to get the hostel ready to welcome the next group in for a final Munro “compleation”.
May is always a popular month at the hostel, particularly with groups. This year we’ve had 20 nights of back-to-back whole hostel bookings. The rhythm of running the hostel is completely different when we have a group staying. We don’t have check ins to do once they’ve arrived and we only provide a light housekeeping service each day, just enough to keep the hostel running smoothly. There’s certainly less time spent cleaning during the group’s stay but a full day’s work is required after check out, with a hostel’s worth of bed linen to be washed and dried, cleaning, hoovering, mopping and bed making.
We’ll be back to regular bookings soon and a summer season welcoming hillwalkers, long distance hikers, cyclists and paddlers along with people touring the Scottish Highlands. We very much hope that both old and new friends will keep coming in 2026.
It hasn’t all been work for us. We had an entertaining trip to Cork with friends in February and are actually not long back from a walking trip in southern Italy. More about that in another blog.
As usual, we’d like to thank everyone who stayed with us over the last year and to our family and friends for your continued help and support.