Tuesday 20 January 2015

In a fortnight where there was a little too much upsetting news for my liking (ageing parents...), the one thing that has kept me cheerful is our holiday cottage, that I mentioned in my last post.

As I've mentioned on this blog before, B. lives in a house that he built himself, in the same grounds as his father who lives in a big farmhouse behind B's house. This farmhouse has several barns and outbuildings, in various states of disrepair. One of them in particular always looked like a perfect candidate for converting into a holiday cottage. I used to joke about it, then my jokes became a bit more serious and one day B. agreed that it might be fun.

The renovation started 5 years ago and B. worked on it in his spare time, the holiday cottage competing for attention with skiing, tractors and motorbikes! We never really knew when it would be finished, often it would be 'next Easter' and that Easter would come and go and still we wouldn't be done. But there wasn't any real rush.

Cat helping out

After B. built pretty much everything himself single-handedly (my contribution being the occasional sweeping of the floor or, more likely, tidying up the kitchen in his own house or running another load of laundry so he could concentrate on this building), we are now at the point of furnishing, as you can tell from the last couple of photos. It's not quite finished yet - we are now having heated discussions about pieces of furniture and every day the post arrives with several parcels containing glassware, duvet covers, bath mats and everything else you need to run a home. Last weekend the sofas and the white goods arrived, and it's looking more and more that we can take paying guests from Easter - yes, this Easter!

There is still a lot to do, but I've started thinking about creating a website and marketing the holiday let in order to make it profitable. It is a steep learning curve but I'm very much looking forward to having people there, enjoying a holiday in a cottage that we think is very cosy!

A few details: it's a 2 bedroom cottage which sleeps 4. Downstairs is all open plan with a kitchen with woodburner cooker and induction hob on one side, and living room with woodburner on the other side. The back doors open onto a patio/seating area that is completely private and overlooks a large field with hedges.
Upstairs are two bedrooms, one main bedroom with double bed and one smaller bedroom with two single beds. Bathroom with bath/shower over bath/basin/toilet/bidet. Bedding/towels/logs/electricity included. The cottage is situated about 2 miles outside Pulham St. Mary, which has a village shop and a community centre with a cafe, open 6 days a week. The next village along, Pulham Market, has two pubs. The market town Diss is a 20 minutes drive away, Norwich half an hour, Cambridge is 80 minutes and the coast about 40 minutes. There are lots of public footpaths near the cottage and of course when you come back, you can warm up by the woodburner or have a barbecue on the patio!

The website should be up and running very soon, but in the meantime you can start to follow us on Twitter (@oldhorsestable) for updates... (and some more photos of furnishing in progress are here https://www.flickr.com/photos/38243956@N00/sets/72157627375567336)

Maybe see you there sometime?