Lights out: September 2000. The landmark Cornish Youth Hostel closes its doors for the final time.

The view, on this windy September day, from the solid Cornish granite tower that rises above the Victorian army barracks that comprises the youth hostel at Pendennis Castle in Falmouth, is bracing and spectacular. To the east lies the tranquil river Fal and Pendennis's identical twin, St Mawes Castle, guarding as it did in Henry VIII's day, the strategically important entrance to the Carrick Roads harbour - providing a calm inlet to many rivers and a vital vein into Southern England.

To the west is the famous Helford Passage and Lizard peninsula and, in contrast, the giant, distant radio telescope dishes of Goonhilly Down, growing from the unlikely Cornish countryside like so many giant fungi. To the south foam the swells of the great grey Atlantic, where distant fishing boats' lights wink on the far horizon.

Impressively lit-up at night, Pendennis Castle rises imposingly on a high finger of green headland jutting into the ocean, the generally kind sea on three sides providing a haven for trading and military ships harking back to Britain's days as a formidable naval power. Packet ships from Falmouth would sail the world over from this, Europe's second largest natural harbour. 'Falmouth for Orders' used to be the cry of sailors heading back to their adopted home and the friendly seaman's mission, from romantic far-flung ports like Amsterdam, Tangier, East India and the New World. Even now, the busy port and dry dock paints and repairs huge tankers and container ships with distant ports of registration like Nassau, Murmansk and Liberia.

During the War

During the Second World War Pendennis Castle was an anti-aircraft, shipping and submarine spotting outpost. Forming in the grim days of the early 1940s a vital link in the chain of Southern England's coastal defences. As Falmouth docks burned under the dark, daunting might of the Luftwaffe, weary WAAFs (Women's Auxilliary Air Force) and artillerymen, bleary-eyed and sipping their NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) tea from tin mugs in cupped hands would, unwaveringly, scan the sky and sea for the enemy.

Post-war, the castle garrison was quietly stood-down, and the grounds passed from the Ministry of Defence to what would become the QUANGO that is English Heritage. The Victorian barracks that formed the U-shaped backdrop to the old parade ground was then leased to the Youth Hostel Association (YHA). It has provided a pricelessly inspiring overnight venue for wide-eyed travellers from all over the world ever since.

An array of cannon, artillery pieces and a breathtaking view are the things that most visitors remember, and the treat of staying in a castle with real ramparts and battlements. Even though the hostel isn't actually in the 16th Century keep, but the Victorian barracks, it doesn't seem to matter as the view, especially at night, of the up-lighting of the castle is unforgettable.

September, 2000

In the grey September of the year 2000, what was a disappointingly dreary summer heralded the calling of 'lights out' to this famous institution. Not for Pendennis Hostel is the eroding, relentless, pounding of the sea, nor is it's demise due to the commercial pressure of competitors from Newquay and trendy Rock, it is simply this; the lease expired, and was not to be renewed. English Heritage will repossess the site and close the hostel.

The very last guest checked in their regulation sheet-blanket and was bid a cheery yet final farewell on the morning of Saturday 9 September, 2000, and then, slowly, the doors closed forever to the backpacking travellers from around the world that have paced these corridors since the 1960s. Only a skeleton staff and a few past employees, travelling as they did from all over the UK to be here, at the end, remained. Maybe to reminisce, possibly to relive old times here, definitely to bemoan the inauspicious fate of the place.

Over the years, the visitors book is impressive reading. It is not possible, on this planet, to travel further than from where regular trekkers have come to visit what must be Cornwall's most dramatically impressive hostel - a picture-book destination whose closure will undoubtedly affect the business of the YHA in the whole of Cornwall.

The Association has, perhaps, rested a little too comfortably in its possession of some of the most picturesque and unspoilt spots in the country. For this Researcher, having done 'the season' at Pendennis six years ago, in the unrelentingly gorgeous summer of 1995, this visit during the final days of this bastion, in many ways, of all that hostellers hold dear, is uniquely poignant.

There was always something engaging and reassuring in the solid comfort of the place, from the typically English menus featuring Shepherd's Pie and Bakewell Pudding to the no frills tradition of the 'quiet' room, the TV and scrabble room, and the 'no admittance after 11 o'clock' policy.

This was something of a joke.

When travellers arrived they were told to be back before 11 as the hostel would then close. This was sometimes greeted with some ridicule amongst more hardy revellers until it was gently pointed out that the castle was named as such for a reason. Once the two-ton oak doors were slowly and creakingly swung and bolted shut for the night, admittance, short of scaling the ramparts, was impossible. Especially after sampling Falmouth's delightful harbour side pubs and the nullifying effects of the local ales, curious brews called something like Cornish Welt, Wrecker Figgy's ale and Quoit's Feduddler, to name, unreliably, a few.

It seems everything has a price rather than a value nowadays. The Youth Hostel at Pendennis provided a much more valuable service to the World community and mankind as a whole by providing a location that most of the world's first class hotels cannot boast, than the stuffy museum piece or even 'Interactive' Pendennis Castle Experience' that will undoubtedly replace it.

A Farewell Party

Places like Pendennis, they hold a certain special ambience with those who have passed through their portals and benefited from the experience. Ironically, with age and time, one begins to realise that things however do not stay the same. You begin to realise that your parents are fallible, that you will in fact die one day, and that if you don't work out that the proper function of life is to live, not just to exist, you will be in danger of looking back and saying something like, 'was that it?'.

A farewell party was held to which many old friends, colleagues and townsfolk were invited, dressed in dinner jackets, in the casino and cocktail bar set up in the old officers mess people talked of old times and the future plans of the now redundant staff.

The actual Pendennis Castle site in Falmouth is of course still open to visit, however firmly under the aegis of English Heritage, so for your stay a guest house or hotel will have to suffice.

So it looks like the blue-rinse, rotary club, middle-England establishment have won again, and the public have lost something worthwhile.