En suite bathrooms, Wi-Fi and cool decor are no longer strangers to youth hostels, which still offer great camaraderie – perhaps why Guardian readers voted the YHA winner of the best UK hotel in this year’s travel awards
•Five of the best YHA hostels in the UK
In my teenage years, a summer spent youth hostelling with friends was one of the only holiday options that met with universal parental approval. A painstakingly wholesome, budget-friendly dose of communal self-catering, making new chums over a couple of jolly rounds of cribbage, then going upstairs to sleep with them. No, mum, not like that.
But single-sex dormitories filled with snorers and mud were a tough sell to those of us who’d moved on from Enid Blyton to Hunter S Thompson and feared sharing a bunk bed with some prematurely bearded, Kumbaya-humming hostel stereotype of the age.
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