Coulscott's Blog 2011Christmas PhotosThurdsday 29th December 2011 Some new Christmas photos of the cottages. 
   
More Photos of Bantam Cottage Tuesday 27th December 2011 We have taken some more photos of Bantam Cottage with some new bits and bobs in. 
 Photos of Bantam Cottage Monday 19th December 2011 We have taken some photos of the new wetroom, sofa and wallpaper in Bantam Cottage. We urgently need our photographer to come in and take some proper photos of all this winter's improvements! 
 Not Many Breakages in 2011 Monday 12th December 2011 Guests have been careful of all the houses again this year with us getting very little damage so there are a very small number of repairs. The one area where we do get things broken are the kitchens as our slate floors are very unforgiving when things are dropped. We are going to do an in depth audit of the the kitchens to make sure that everything that is missing is replaced as all our spares have been used up as the year has gone by. Goodbye to Bunks in Aylesbury Saturday 19th November 2011 Our bunk room in Aylesbury cottage after much debate has been changed into a twin room. We have wanted to do this for ages but were not sure how to do it. By moving the door so it opens outwards we can now get two beds along the long wall. We are ordering two divans for here and look forward to getting a photo on the website. Spring Cleaning Monday 14th November 2011 The yearly spring clean has started with everything that moves and most things that can't, being washed, steamed or scrubbed. As we have workmen in we go round in circles but are slowly getting there. Builders Working on the Cottages Monday 7th November 2011 Now we are closed until Christmas the workmen have moved in. First on the list is a new wet room for Bantam Cottage. It will be lined with Travertine marble and will have a lovely solid marble basin. The bathrooms in Peacock and Aylesbury cottages are also going to be re-tiled with travertine but will be keeping their baths. When these are finished we will try and get some good photos on the website. Guest's Comments Tuesday 26th October 2011 We have been asking our guests what improvements they would like to see here and the feedback has been very interesting and helpful. Some suggestions such as more towel rails and some larger TVs are really feasible and we will try to implement them. Star Rating for the Cottages Friday 14th October 2011 Today was our star rating inspection which is always a nerve racking experience. We were delighted to get a five star gold award for the Old Farmhouse, which compliments the five star gold we got for the Georgian House last year, this is due to the third bathroom which we had fitted this year. Our three cottages also got higher marks than last year and are heading towards five star levels; however we are very happy to have the four star gold award again for these. Working on the Cottages Thursday 13th October 2011 We are starting to prepare for the out of season work that needs doing so we are ready for next year. The decorator is starting in November and many of the bathrooms are going to be either partially or fully re-tiled. For this we are ordering many, many square metres of travertine tiles. Ozzie is 2 Months Old Thursday 6th October 2011 Ozymandias is growing very fast and is still feeding only from his Mother. It will be another four months until he can cope without her. We hope that she is now pregnant again; though there is no way of telling until one day in about ten months there will be another baby.  Percival the Peacock Sunday 2nd October 2011 Our male peacock has lost his tail and looks ridiculous. No sooner had he lost it, than it started growing again. So he now has a very short and bizarre tail. Our older peahen keeps trying to sit on her nest which she keeps making where the fox roams. In order to save her from being eaten we have to break up the nest. If she would only lay in the animal enclosure she would be perfectly safe and then we could have some peachicks.  More Stunning Weather Friday 30th September 2011 The weather is fantastic. None of us can believe it. After a mediocre summer it is a real treat and our guests are spending sunny days on the beaches. However someone did mention snow; I hope they are wrong. New Tractor at Coulscott Tuesday 27th September 2011 We have got a new mini tractor which as it is designed for the Alps, should deal with our very steep fields. We are starting to use it to mow some of the less scary fields and will try and get it all done before the weather turns wet again. It would be nice to generate some of our own hay for the animals though unless we buy lots of equipment it will be very hard work. Coulscott's Chickens Wednesday 31st August 2011 Our chicken's eggs are still very popular with guests. Having the chickens completely free range gives the eggs a superb flavour. Any over a week old are fed to the pigs, much to their delight, to ensure that humans always have fresh ones.  Ozzie Tuesday 30th August 2011 Ozymandias is growing very fast and has started experimenting with different foods. Hopefully he will learn that gates are not very nutritious.  2013 Availability Tuesday 23rd August 2011 We have decided to alter our changeover days to Friday for all our cottages from 2013. This will enable guests booking multiple cottages to arrive on the same day. We have been asked to put our 2013 availability online so we did so today! Great Weather Sunday 21st August 2011 Summer is much better this year with very few days when guests have been housebound. We are getting some showers so everything is looking very lush and green. Swimming Pigs Thursday 18th August 2011 The joys of keeping animals! Our pigs staged a mass breakout, then swam across a deep pond. Chasing pigs around Coulscott at midnight was interesting. New Website Online Monday 15th August 2011 Today our new website goes online. Hopefully there will not be too many teething problems, although we expect some as we have done the website ourselves! Baby Alpaca Saturday 6th August 2011 After several false starts our pregnant alpaca, Thisbe, gave birth to a little male cria. He arrived very easily at Saturday lunch time and was walking and feeding so quickly. He is a dark fawn colour, very fluffy and is called Ozymandias (Ozzie). Both he and his Mother are doing very well and she is looking after him brilliantly.  New Style Blog Thursday 4th August 2011 To go with our new website we have decided to have a different style of blog. This will stop us forgetting things as we used to when we did our monthly blog. I hope that visitors to our site will find it as informative. April and May April started as it meant to go on with yet more fantastic weather. We have had summer temperatures and little rain for the whole month. For the first time in five years we have had to use a sprinkler on the vegetable patch. Guests are able to spend days at the beach and we have seen plenty of sunburn. Then May arrived and with it ordinary weather which has been a bit of a shock. Our lack of rain has been reversed and now everything is looking very lush and green. Two of the ducks are sitting on eggs, which the crows and magpies are helping themselves to whenever the ducks go for food. It will only be a few days now until the first lot of eggs hatch, assuming that they were fertilized. The peacocks have been banished to a temporary peacock prison on the other side of the site. Percival our male peacock had decided to take up residence out side some of the collages and honk for his girl friends at five in the morning. As a result of this anti social behavior we had to quickly build a large enclosed pen and move them all into it. Life is now very much quieter. As an extra bonus the peahens are laying eggs in here, which means that they are now safe. With any luck in about 6 weeks we will have some peachicks. As was expected there is still no sign of whether our alpaca is pregnant. She looks very large but this happened last year and it was only the thick fleece. Increasing oil prices are concentrating the mind on how to become even greener. As two of our oil boilers will need a major overhaul this winter we are considering replacing them with air source heat pumps. We are awaiting quotes and will almost certainly go for it. As our oil costs are now double what they were 4 years ago the payback time should be quite quick despite the huge cost of the heat pumps. The sunny, hot weather has been fueling the pool through our solar panels and guests love how warm it has been getting. Surprisingly given the recession we are starting to get bookings come through for next year. People still seem keen to stay in Britain and things like the Icelandic volcano make them nervous of flying. Families with young children seem to particularly dislike airports and staying in the UK is ideal for them. March Fantastic weather brings in the spring. We are having dry sunny days and our guests can’t believe their luck. Today we are set to be the warmest part of the UK and already people are starting to go brown. The nights are still cold with the occasional frost so the geraniums can’t go out yet. The grass is growing madly and we have managed to break our third lawn mower with the lawns half done. We aretesting a small tractor today, which will be much tougherthan domestic mower and hope that we will like it. All our animals are enjoying the weather and the chickens are laying so many eggs. The middle of the day usually findseverything sunbathing in little hollows in the ground. The wild animals are being very active; the foxes have been howling and roaming around, the owls are hooting morning and evening and the female buzzard is probably sitting on the nest as we are now only seeing one bird out hunting. The jays are being very raucous and are not very musical.  
We have had plans drawn up for a tree house, which can be let as a two-bedroom cottage. It is now up to the planners who are very cautious about any development. They can of course stop any change to our site and we just hope that they can see how beautiful it could be and how low impact. Feed back from guests is that it would be very popular. If we get permission we intend to build it over next winter when we will need to close down due to the noise and disturbance. Premier Cottages, which is the holiday group we are involved with, has chosen Help 4 Heroes as its very worthwhile charity. Members are being asked to donate what they can. Coulscott is delighted to have donated three cottages for the remembrance Sunday week and hope that it is a great success. We are also hoping to have collection boxes to put in our houses. Several guests have asked if we have somewhere to store bicycles and to that end we have just installed a bicycle rack in the carport. It will hold three bikes and give their owners peace of mind that they are secure if they are chained up. February Coulscott was closed for 3 weeks in January so we could have our first proper holiday for a long time. It was a great relief to get back and see everything in good shape particularly our animals. They had had to put up with some horribly wet and cold weather. Our nice new French painted furniture has arrived for the downstairs bedroom in the Old Farmhouse and looks super. We are really pleased with the way the new wet room and better shaped bedroom has worked out. This suite is our only downstairs facility and will hopefully allow guests with slight mobility problems to stay. We are also putting the same type of painted dressing tables and stools in the four-poster bedrooms in Peacock and Aylesbury Cottages. The twin beds in Peacock have been replaced with cream Victorian style cast iron beds and look very nice.  
A dishwasher has been fitted in Bantam for the first time, which should please all our regular guests. We asked them during the course of last year if they would like one installing and there was a resounding “yes”. Now all of our properties have a dishwasher. Thankfully all the hot tubs seem to have survived the freezing winter. Unfortunately the peacocks have discovered that if they sit on the covers they too find the winter easier to cope with. It is a good job that the goats can’t get to the hot tubs or else they would fall through the covers.   Hopefully winter is coming to an end. The temperature is much warmer than last month and things are starting to grow. All the snow drops are out and the daffodils should not be too far behind. We are doing a lot of seed planting for the vegetable garden and it will definitely be warm enough to get things out into the greenhouse. The chickens are being put to work to eat slugs etc in the greenhouse and to fertilize it at the same time. Egg production is starting to take off again as the days get longer and so the chickens are really earning their keep. Our oldest chicken has nearly stopped laying so she will become just a pet and live another two plus years. January We have had a lovely Christmas and New Year with lots of guests and family making Coulscott feel delightful. All our Christmas trees (eight in total) looked beautiful in the cottages and most could be seen from outside as they had been placed in the windows. Our few inches of snow lasted for the first week of the holidays and much to everyone’s surprise it stayed really white. The snow was a really festive touch and it’s a shame we can’t order it every year. Everybody was able to get here despite the weather as our road clearers did a good job and nearly everything was passable with care. A lot of guests enjoyed using the hot tubs in the really cold weather and the cottage’s hot tub got a great deal of use. Hot tubs come into their own in cold weather and if it snows it is even better.  
Our new bathroom in the Old Farmhouse has been very successful, particularly as none of our guests were expecting it. As we had to move one of the doors the layout of the bedroom has changed and changed for the better. We will have to get some new furniture for the room now and hope to get some French painted items delivered before half term. We have also ordered a dishwasher for Bantam Cottage as this was the only cottage without one. We are hoping that it will arrive and get plumbed in before the half term. The wood burning stove has been delivered and is waiting to be put into Aylesbury Cottage but our installer is very busy with everyone having had the same idea in this cold winter. It would be nice to get it fitted so that guests can enjoy it before the winter ends. All the animals have had mixed reactions to the cold snowy weather. The alpacas didn’t notice it and quite happily walked around with thick snow on their backs and heads, whilst the ducks still seemed delighted to go swimming in the ponds. The goats and chickens really didn’t like cold wet feet and complained a lot; small animal wellies would have been much appreciated. |
