[A]n experienced mountain rescuer is marking 25 years in charge of one of the Lake District’s most idyllic hostels.
Nick Owen is the manager at the independent Elterwater Hostel, and was previously manager when the place belonged to the Youth Hostels Association. He stayed in post four years ago when the hostel was sold to new owners.
Elterwater lies at the heart of the Langdale Valley alongside the small lake of the same name. First opened as a hostel in 1939, the building was originally a barn, thought to date from 1692. An adjoining cottage was once used by John Ruskin as a small lace-making factory.
During the Second World War the hostel was used as accommodation for workers of Shorts of Sunderland, who were involved in building flying boats on Windermere.
Now it offers year round hospitality with 38 beds in small dormitories, beautiful gardens with views of the fells – and a reputation for good home cooking.
Nick Owen, who has been leader of the Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team for the past 10 years, is a former engineer who has spent his life walking, climbing and cycling. It was while working in a factory in his home town of Skelmersdale that he rubbed clean a dirty window, and looked out at the bleak view.
“I knew then that there had to be a better way to make a living,” he recalls. “I’d used hostels when I was on holiday, and saw a job advertised at one in Oxford. I didn’t know where Oxford was, except that it was somewhere down south.”
While working there he met his future wife, Deborah, an Australian who was travelling around the world. He followed her back to Australia and they did a working tour together, eventually marrying in 1990.
By then Nick was working at the Kendal YHA hostel, eventually as manager, and the couple moved to Elterwater in 1992. Their daughter Sophie was born the following year.
It was a lifestyle choice first and foremost. “It’s a beautiful place to live, and a good place to bring up a child. And the shifts mean that I have the afternoons free to be involved in mountain rescue.”
After years of helping those in difficulty in the hills, Nick found himself being rescued by air ambulance after a cycling accident a few years ago. It was a low-speed fall on a quiet road not far from the hostel. “I did my own first aid assessment and realised it was serious,” he recalls.
Nick was out of action for more than five months with a serious hip fracture; the subsequent hip replacement, and a shoulder tendon injury, brought an end to open water swimming: “No more triathlons”. But he’s content to walk and climb in some of Britain’s loveliest landscapes. (His attempt on all the Wainwrights stalled at number 103: “Why would I drive all that way to climb some remoter hills when I have all this on the doorstep?”)
As manager of the hostel, he’s an expert jack of all trades, enjoys cooking, and spends the winters painting, decorating and repairing. Since the hostel became independent, he says, the new owners are investing money in the business and in the premises, without compromising the essential character of the building. “It’s a very co-operative arrangement. They value the knowledge I bring to the business.”
There’s year round variety, meeting travellers from all over the world, hosting school groups or those on Duke of Edinburgh challenges; fell runners meet there each autumn for navigation courses. Further conversation is curtailed; the pager has gone off. There’s a walker in difficulties on the fells above Langdale, and the mountain rescuer and his team are off into action.
You can book to stay at Elterwater via the hostel’s website: http://www.elterwaterhostel.co.uk/
