A Holiday Cottage in Rural Herefordshire

A HOLIDAY COTTAGE IN RURAL HEREFORDSHIRE

 

Waiting for the arrival of the Visit England Inspector to look over Rose Cottage and award stars before the start of the first letting season.   Vases of spring flowers, new bedlinen and towels, pretty flowery paper in the drawers and a brand new kitchen.   The Inspector is very thorough - looking closely at the mattress, searching for grubby grout between the shower tiles and checking the kitchen cupboards for china and cutlery.  He enquires about outside lights, smoke alarms and asks to see the Fire Assessment documents.   Are we giving our guests enough information about the nearest shops, telephone boxes and hospitals?


 

 

Year One and Rose Cottage is awarded 3 stars.   Advertising in the Visit Hereford Magazine brings in plenty of visitors.  Two groups of guests book for the ten days of the Hay Festival.  Among walkers, painters and dog owners a couple of music lovers book for the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. A very good beginning and it bodes well for the future.

 

Year Two - several improvements mean that Rose Cottage is now a 4star Holiday Let.   The visit from the Inspector goes well, due mainly to 5 year old Rosa, who takes charge of the conversation. A bright and cheerful website means that most of the bookings are now made online.  Hay Festival is booked by a literature lover for the entire 10 days and there is a surprise from the past when a colleague from Bath University and his wife choose to spend a week here.   City dwellers, they were taken aback and didn’t know where to turn when sheep invaded their garden. (This happened a couple of times before we could reinforce the fences!)

 

Half way through Year Three - still with our hard won 4star status and a dazzling report from the Inspector at the end of April.  A good start for the season heralded by the return of last year’s Hay Festival couple who have now asked for ‘first refusal’ for Hay Festival 2012.  So far,  a two week stay to celebrate a 60th birthday gave visitors the chance to visit Hay, Hereford, Ross, Symonds Yat and Ludlow - starting with a birthday dinner with family at The Castlefields pub.  Two sets of return guests are coming back in September - drawn once more to this beautiful county and they include keen birdwatchers, walkers and book lovers.  

 

  • Making Rose Cottage a welcoming holiday cottage has been a very rewarding experience.  Meeting people from Japan and Germany as well as from all around the British Isles has been interesting and entertaining.  Up to now visitors have booked only in the summer and autumn, but the social network Twitter is the ideal way of contacting and attracting people such as writers, in search of solitude and peace.   A winter-let to a well known novelist maybe?

The Joy of Clutter-Free Living

My friends kindly refer to my house as "cosy" and "homely" and even "full of character".  What they mean is that my home is a mess, that there are books everywhere, piles of newspapers on every surface with bits of mismatched china, old photographs and knick knacks weighing down all the shelves.  To me it is disordered organisation - to others it is colourful chaos.
The degree to which I live in a state of clutter is very apparent when I go across to the Retreat Cottage.  Here nothing is superfluous.  The kitchen is equipped with every kind of pan, knife and gadget that a guest might need, but there are no personal bits and pieces.   In the sitting room, one sees a neat row of CDs, DVDs and books underneath the television/DVD player - chosen with the general reader and viewer in mind.  Again, nothing to give away much information about the person who put it all together. 
 
It is so easy to keep the Cottage clean and tidy and in many  ways I would love to live like this, but then I return to my kitchen and feel the comfort of familiarity.   Objects with their own history which nobody else knows about - the day we chose the old pine table in a shop in Hereford, the plate that belonged to a long-dead aunt and the chopping board picked up in a craft shop in mid-Wales over 20 years ago. 
 
Over the years I have done heroic amounts of clutter clearing.  Some inherited books went to a second hand shop in Hay while the majority went to the Amnesty bookshop in Cheltenham.   Clothes in heavy bags dragged into Charity Shops and personal papers scattered onto a succession of huge bonfires.  Larger pieces of furniture, an old unwanted fridge left by a friend, bags of sheep fleeces and old television sets given away through the fantastic FreeCycle scheme.  After each major clearing of clutter or giving away of possessions no longer needed, I have felt it easier to breathe and have also been able to appreciate and treasure the things I have chosen to keep.

In my quest to be a tidy person, there will be many more clutter clearings and frequent attempts to impose neatness and order.  However, I shall never be able to harden my heart and throw out those precious things that have little value other than the memories they evoke. 

Creating a vegetable plot

As much as I love trees, shrubs and flowers, I get the most satisfaction of all from growing my own vegetables.   A few weeks ago, after being ill and still having very little energy, I was presented with five raised beds filled with rich loamy soil, all ready to be planted up.   It proved to be just the therapy I needed - modest exercise, fresh air and the fun of planning which seeds and plants to choose for the first ever season.  

Vegetables that are not easy to find on the shelves of the supermarket were my first choice and in most cases the ones I chose come in unusual colours.  Yellow courgettes, purple french beans and multicoloured chard.  Among the vegetables I have sown flowers and herbs to make a riot of colour:  nasturtiums between the rows of runner beans, borage beside the broad beans and coriander next to the courgette plants.


Most of this future crop has been grown from seed.  I love the age-old practice of letting the seeds run through my fingers into the earth and then making the gentle movement with the back of the rake as it covers them in fine soil.  As I was starting my vegetable plot rather late in the year I bought organic courgette plants from the stall in the market in Hay-on-Wye.  Since then I have grown more courgette plants from seed and these will probably soon catch the others up. 
 
There is nothing much to see in the vegetable plot at the moment -  runner beans waving their tendrils but still reluctant to climb up their canes and courgette plants offering the sky a diffident yellow flower or two.   There is a row of lettuce and mixed salad seedlings and a whole bed of sweet peas. Within a few weeks, if all goes to plan, it will be time to pick the flowers and harvest the first tender vegetables to share with friends. 

Photos:

Raised vegetable beds in the newly created plot
Fluffy cat checks out the chard seedlings

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Hay Festivities

After spending the past four days in the rarified atmosphere of the Hay Festival Site it was fun to wander around the town today. Hay was crowded with those who felt the need to relax, after being steeped in erudition, by visiting the shops, pubs and cafes of the town.

Mouthwatering cooking smells were drawing people towards the food stalls in the Castle Courtyard - queues formed for Elci's crepes and Elena's spicy rice and potato dishes.  A chance to sit in the sun and read a newspaper at the solid looking refectory tables while trying the wraps, fresh juices and real coffee - nowhere better for an al fresco lunch.

The Globe is making the most of its outdoor space with tents, a yurt and plenty of sitting areas.   There were no HowTheLightGetsIn talks going on while I was there, but the acoustic tent was full of people and food was being prepared on a open air grill.  On the lower level, a handmade clothes stall brightened up a corner next to a wittily decorated tree. 

Photos:
Tents at the Globe
The Globe Field
Elci's crepe stall

 

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Build-up to the Hay Festival 2011

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Taking a deep breath after all the excitement of the Borderlines Film Festival before taking the plunge and getting involved with the Hay Literature Festival at the end of May.   Tickets have been on sale for a couple of weeks and many events are sold out - especially the evening concerts and all the outdoor guided walks and jaunts.  Work in the Box Office has been relentless - telephones ringing off their hooks from 9am until 6pm every day of the week.

 
Booking has also started on-line for HowTheLightGetsIn at the Globe with special early bird prices to entice us locals.  The garden at the globe is transformed at festival time - a bar in a yurt, philosophy talks in tents, live music and organic ice cream on sale. The Globe garden has been extended to provide plenty of space for outdoor tables for those who just want to sit, read and daydream.

So far, I have bought a handful of tickets for the first weekend of the Literature Festival and seats for the amazingly inventive and colourful Gifford's Circus.  HowTheLightGetsIn tickets are the next priority - I am determined to give more support to this brilliant, cerebral initiative this year.   The Festival Fringe and the food stalls in the Castle courtyard also help to bring people up from the Festival site and into the shops, pubs and cafes of Hay-on-Wye town.
  
On a personal note, our retreat cottage is fully booked for the whole Hay Festival period and has been since last year's Festival, but  I am still getting  email enquiries! 

Photograph: Retreat Cottage
   
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