George DeRoe, who has died aged 93, was one of the few people in Britain with no electricity. During his years as the warden of Dolgoch youth hostel in the mountains of mid-Wales, George – not entirely to the delight of his employers – built himself a simple breezeblock home on the edge of the property and remained there for his last 20 years after being forced into retirement.

With his piano and battery-powered radio as constant companions, he pondered scientific, artistic and philosophical phenomena, from the ever-expanding universe down to the neutrino, and professed that he was never bored, except when cricket coverage usurped the BBC's long-wave band.

He was born George Roe, but later added the "De" because he thought it made his name more interesting - though he expressed regret that it was never interesting enough to attract a wife to share it with him. George's parents owned a corner shop in White Lea, now a suburb of Leeds.

He left school at 14. A pacifist during the second world war, his job, as he put it, was collecting body parts from bombed buildings. Before becoming a youth hostel warden, he worked as an assistant in his family's shop, as a gardener, and played the piano for the Methodist church.

Though he never left the British Isles, George's idiosyncratic lifestyle earned him a certain celebrity, and on his 90th birthday he received more than 100 cards from five continents. One of his many anecdotes was how he was once snowed in for several weeks, eventually spied a sledge coming over the hills and imagined he was being brought vital supplies, only to find it was Jehovah's Witnesses laden with copies of the Watchtower. In his 10th decade, he invested his life savings in a golden flute.

A few years ago, George broke his leg and spent three days prostrate on the floor until found by the postman. While recuperating in hospital, he asked the nurses: "Who had the nicest legs here before I came?" But when he recovered, he insisted on returning to his mountain home.

George was no recluse. He loved visitors. They in turn appreciated his dry Yorkshire wit, and his performances on the piano. When a friend asked him if he would do anything differently, he replied: "I should have married. It is not natural to live life on your own."

But Dolgoch was not the place to find a wife. George's brother predeceased him.