Kettlewell Youth Hostel: Couple who grew their Yorkshire Dales hostel from 1,000 visitors a year to 4,000 put live-work business up for sale

In 2015, the charity put the rundown bunkhouse up for sale as it was losing money, using the profits to invest in improvements to other properties. The buyers were Saul and Floss Ward, who left their home in Harrogate for a new challenge.

The couple had no experience of running a tourist business or even of the hospitality trade – Saul had worked for outdoor brand Rohan and Floss in finance.

They were shocked by what they found. Kettlewell was attracting only 1,000 visitors per year and was in poor condition, with broken taps and faulty heating. Although the YHA had disposed of the three-storey Victorian townhouse, the Wards remained affiliated to the organisation as a franchised ‘network’ hostel.

Quirkily, the sale even included a requirement that they take on the running of the village post office from the building, and Mr Ward trained as a postmaster, but the branch closed four years ago due to lack of use.

"When we bought it, it was in dire straits, losing money and in a poor state of repair, with a leaking roof and no double glazing,” recalled Mr Ward.

"It’s now beautiful and everything is in working order. We’ve got a lot of new customers, but in the first year we did nothing but clean up the place. We immediately improved the food, and started getting some nice reviews. We were heading in the right direction, and we became busier through word of mouth. We now get 4,000 guests a year and the hostel is so much better.

"More people eat with us rather than elsewhere, which makes all the difference.”

The hostel has a menu featuring food and beers from local suppliers, and its unique selling point is a second-hand bookshop, which the Wards chose to maintain rather than a TV room to encourage their guests to converse.

Although numbers have grown, the profile of hostellers has remained the same, with the school and youth activity groups being joined by families and older people visiting the area for its walking.

"There’s a gap of about 20 years; we don’t get many in the 18-25 age group, but they come back once they have kids. Older people are a mainstay of the hostelling industry, and we get very active people aged into their 80s. A lot of old university friends book reunions here.

"Having the bookshop has elevated the conversations – we refused to have a TV! The post office had to go in the end, as people didn’t use it, but we realised we didn’t see the neighbours anymore, so we now have coffee mornings instead. The hostel has a place in the village and we are right in the middle of things here.”

This community participation involved Mr Ward making 200 litres of soup for the annual scarecrow festival, which raised money for the church, school and village hall.

"I’ll miss the village and the people. I enjoy the area, running up Great Whernside with the dog. We’re two minutes from the fells.”

The Wards are hoping to sell the hostel – on the market for £850,000 – to a younger couple with the energy to run it in its current guise and their agents have agreed to give preference to buyers intending to retain its use.

"There are challenges – learning to cook for large groups of people at once was a difficult skill to grasp. You’re never really off-duty, but we only open at weekends during the winter, so you do get to recharge your batteries.

"Our children are at university now and we have an idea of what we want to do next. Ideally, we want it to go to people like us, but 10 years younger! We’d never done anything like this before, had never worked with each other, but the whole family got into it.”