Following the Skipton Eco Trail: Eco Day 2026

Eco Day was back on Saturday 30th May for its fourth year, with so much to see and do this time that the attractions spilt out across town in the form of the Skipton Eco Trail. Share Skipton were involved again too, our own library of Things and free monthly Repair Café happening to coincide - busy, busy!

The trail reminds us that being eco-conscious is more than a one-day affair, and highlights places in town that help support a friendly, sustainable Skipton, all year round. By visiting each location and picking up letters to a secret word, participants could even earn themselves a prize.^{(prizes until the 15th of June ‘26)}

A map of Skipton showing the Eco Trail route (2026 version).

So let’s get to it… 👣

1 　Insect Mansion

The eco trail starts close to the canal basin, just off the towpath where Coach Street bridge crosses the Thanet Canal. Tucked into a shaded corner amongst the greenery is a small wooden structure filled with twigs and canes, the different sections offering shelter to all manner of pollinating and pest-controlling insects. And perhaps more importantly, did you know Skipton is a herbicide- and pesticide-free town, at least on town council grounds?

Insect hotels (or larger ‘mansions’, like this one) are excellent home practice for your DIY skills and don’t take up much space once installed. What’s more, you can customise them to the kinds of insect you want to attract: drill holes of various sizes for solitary bees, make vertical spaces for butterflies, or add horizontal cracks for ladybirds. Position in a sheltered spot away from the wind and rain and watch your garden’s biodiversity thrive - not just insects, but insectivorous birds too.

2 　Oxfam

A short stroll onto Swadford Street and you’ll find one of Skipton’s many charity shops, in this case Oxfam. Carrying everything from clothing and homeware to books and artwork, proceeds from their ethically-sourced and second-hand sales go towards tackling poverty and humanitarian disasters around the globe.

Buying second-hand is an important part of any sustainable economy, allowing manufactured items to remain useful instead of going to landfill or recycling earlier than necessary. As well as accepting donations in person, Oxfam now have a free postal donation option as well.

Don’t forget, the separate Oxfam Bookshop is over on the High Street, and there are plenty more organisations around Skipton whose shops support other worthwhile causes, such as Mind, Shelter, and Yorkshire Cat Rescue.

3 　Share Skipton: library of Things

Oh hey, it’s us! For the kinds of things you’d only use a couple of times a year or less, why waste space in your home and money from your pocket when you could borrow what you need, for exactly as long as you need it.

Based on Newmarket Street, the dedicated Share Skipton volunteers help everyone to lend, borrow and share more than ever before, in turn reducing climate-harming CO₂ emissions and cutting the amount of raw materials needing to be mined/deforested/synthesised to create new products.

Want to build that insect hotel or spruce up your own home? Members can borrow basic hand tools at no extra cost, and many of our power tools average around £2.50 per one-week loan - all item costs halved if you’re financially struggling.
Hosting family or friends? We have portable furniture and spare kitchen equipment, as well as indoor/outdoor games and lots of other fun stuff.

4 　Share Skipton Repair Café

Immediately across the road from the library of Things, our ever-popular Repair Café happened to coincide with this year’s eco day. Embodying true community spirit, these free monthly walk-in repair days bring people together to help mend their own belongings, with the oversight and assistance of local experts and enthusiasts.
Whether it’s a toaster that no longer pops up, a favourite cardigan with a torn sleeve, or garden shears that’ve become too blunt to cut, you’re more than welcome to the next repair event at the end of this month.

As well as keeping items useful for longer, repairing helps reduce the levels of plastic and other waste materials escaping into the environment. You’ll also come away with a better appreciation of how the things you use work – even if they weren’t working when you brought them in ;) – and might learn what to do if something else you own breaks.
We also feature various item swap or collection events throughout the year, sell eco-friendly cleaning/toiletry liquid refills, and there’s even an on-site café run by St. Andrew’s Church Hall volunteers. So feel free to pop in for a look, whether you’ve something to fix or not.

5 　Craven Arts

Just up the road, the next stop is another impressive-looking building: Craven Arts House on Otley Street, next to the police station. Catch an exhibition or live performance, or join a workshop to learn whatever strikes your fancy, be it traditional drawing/painting/writing or something crafty/musical/mixed-media. They have sessions for both children and adults.

Research consistently finds that experiences involving creativity and personal growth are what make people feel most fulfilled; conversely, the psychological benefits of retail therapy are short-lived but the environmental damage is certainly not. So instead of buying into the ‘latest and greatest’ being advertised to you from the end of a conveyor belt, why not explore the town’s cultural side, and express yourself to others in turn.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

— Henry David Thoreau

6 　The Kit Vault

The trail leads us onto Skipton High Street now, and to recently-opened The Kit Vault. They source second-hand outdoor clothing from reliable brands, make sure they’re fit to stand up to the elements once more, and sell them from their shop close to Craven Court’s high-street exit.

Like their website says, “the best kit already exists”, which is just as true in many other retail sectors. As valuable as charity shops are, seeing for-profit businesses take up circular business models like this is amazing, because rescuing and redistributing perfectly usable items is a hugely important step towards reducing environmental impact. We too, as consumers, are increasingly questioning why the thought of someone having owned something before us is such a big deal: did you know that 30% of all clothes made are never sold, and that fast fashion has effectively taught 1 in 3 young women that something worn once or twice is ‘old’? If you want to see the quality of what might otherwise have been thrown away, here’s a good place to do it.

7 　Skipton Library

Nearing the end of the day’s eco walk: Skipton Library. Hopefully there’s no need to explain that you can borrow books, magazines, CDs and DVDs (including digitally, entirely from home), but they provide loads of other helpful services too, including support groups, fun clubs for kids, help with computers, and even assistance tracing your family tree.

Although ‘Skipton Library’ and Share Skipton’s Newmarket Street ‘library of Things’ aren’t related, the concept of lending out items that otherwise wouldn’t get used very often is exactly the same: save money, save storage space, save trees/materials. At the top of the stairs, you’ll also find a dedicated corner where you can drop off recyclables/reusables like old glasses, semi-recent magazines that you’ve finished reading, and even unwanted bras.

8 　Holy Trinity Church

The church at the top of town might be nearly as old as Skipton Castle next to it, but big plans are in place this year to upgrade its heating system in the pursuit of carbon zero – considering parts of the current church date from the ~14th century, that certainly puts the ‘retro’ into retrofit! They even happened to be restoring some old wrought iron gating when we passed by. In 2025, Holy Trinity was awarded bronze eco status by Christian eco charity A Rocha UK, whose Eco Church project encourages initiatives such as: composting and food-growing on church grounds, installing draught/pipe insulation, preaching the importance of caring for nature, and upgrading to solar power or other gas alternatives.

But whether you own a grade I listed medieval building or not, there are loads of great environmentally-minded lessons here that could be applied in businesses, at home, or anywhere else.

9 　Skipton Town Hall

Trail over, all that’s left was to visit the main Eco Day event at the town hall. There were exhibits and speeches as in previous years, the clothes swap made a return, and eco-trailers could pick up their crafty wooden prize for turning in the correct word …but what was it?

^ reminder: the prize window has since closed. Congrats if you got the word; if you’re struggling, maybe scroll up to re-check some of the photos for Eco Trail posters.🐦‍⬛

There was far too much going on at the town hall to cover in writing, so here are 3 top picks from everyone we spoke with:

RECOUP + North Yorkshire Council

Nothing brings about progress quite like working together to tackle the bigger issues. North Yorkshire Council have partnered with waste-advisory charity RECOUP to increase the amount of waste plastics being recycled in our region, reminding us that anything going into our blue recycling bins should be clean, dry, not bagged, and of course the correct type of material. Because if collections are contaminated with things that shouldn’t be in there, having to sift and separate at the recycling centre makes the whole process much less viable.

The council have also introduced another pair of innovative schemes: one allowing you to claim free reusable period products, the other offering cashback for switching away from disposable babies’ nappies.

Climate Action Skipton

Climate Action Skipton, or ‘CASk’ for short, are a community group who circulate up-to-date information about environmental emergencies and push for action to address them. On the day, they were gathering people’s thoughts and concerns about climate change:

They’d rounded up loads of great knowledge to share, such as how consumer/voter choices can influence businesses and governments, weighing up the advantages of current electric vehicles, and how heat pumps actually work. Check out their events line-up if you’d like to become part of the climate conversation (or, if you’re from out of town, look up your local climate action group via North Yorkshire Climate Coalition).

PS/ Here’s the selection of books seen displayed on their table:

Skipton Swifts

Finished building your insect hotel already? Then Skipton Swifts have another project idea for you. Swifts have evolved to spend almost their entire 9 or more years of life in the air, including feeding, mating, and even sleeping. It’s thought they can travel up to 500 miles per day during their migration from Africa to the UK. Not to be confused with swallows or house martins (which construct nests that are visible externally), swifts commonly raise their young hidden away inside the eves of houses, using very little actual nesting material and returning to the exact same spot year after year.

So you can imagine how renovation works that block entry points, and poorly thought-out new builds that don’t take them into account have contributed to their drastic 62% decline in the UK - yet another species now added to the conservation red list.
Until construction firms and policymakers have caught up, you can give swifts a helping hand by either raising the issue as part of any work you have planned…

…or by putting up wooden swift boxes where you’re able. The brown one pictured below was created by Stepping Stones Ⅱ, a horticultural group near the Aireville Park swing bridge for adults with learning disabilities: the gardens are open to the public, and besides growing plants for sale they create everything from hanging baskets and handmade gifts to hedgehog/insect houses, bat boxes and bird feeders.

Others

Again, there were plenty of other stalls we haven’t talked about here, so be sure to catch next year’s Eco Day yourself! Thank you to Skipton Rotary for a great day, and sponsors Beyondly and North Yorkshire Council.