April
It's been a reasonable start to the year with some hardy visitors in February and March. Spring has definitely sprung now and the daffodils and bluebells are in profusion. With amazing sunny weather it has been a joy to sit in the sun room and just gaze out across the fields. A welcome returnee has been a red squirrel so look out for him on the nut-feeder. We are now advertising the house on "AroundAbout Britain" as well as our old-favourites "Independent Cottages" so we'll see how that goes. Roll on summer!
February
Well, we survived storm Eowyn with its 77mph gusts, just one tree at the back of the "garden" has tipped over. The worst part was the power being off for 51/2 days! We ran the generator for an hour at a time just to keep the heating on and we could cook on the camping hob. The novelty soon wore off though. It did give us a chance to clear out the fridge of all the random bags of chips etc. so there's be plenty of room in there now. Power is restored again and I guess the likelihood of such a long power outage must now be reduced with all the work they have done to the lines? It's been quite a while since the last time we had a proper power cut so let's hope it's a long time before the next one!
September
Not quite so exciting as last month but we have a new addition to the kitchen gadgets; an electric coffee grinder. For those of you who like to grind your own beans this is a marked improvement on the manual ones we had before, just pour the beans in the top, press the button for about 10 seconds and you've enough for an espesso or two. Marvellous!
August
After a long long wait - I think I ordered the broadband in March - we now finally have "Fibre to the premises" (FTTP) and a broadband speed approaching the promised 300Mb/s. There's a new router so regular visitors will need to update their WiFi login, it's all labelled.
July
Sometimes serendipity works. A friend pointed out a few loose slates on the roof and I was just wondering who I should contact to come and have a look when there was a ring at the door and a roofer stood there asking if I needed anything doing. I said have a look and give us a quote and he came back later with a big ladder and his two lads went up on the roof like squirrels running around all over it. Needless to say they found loads to do but completed the work in a few days and didn't bankrupt me. No need to worry about the roof for another few months!
May
We now have a water-meter, oh joy.. Due to Hollins recently being designated as a business premises we are now subject to business rates instead of domestic rates. In Scotland domestic rates include the water rates but business rates don't, so we had to have a meter fitted. It doesn't really concern visitors, it lives under an inspection cover in the drive, but it was another little excitement for us!
For further information on bookings please call 0121 314 7092 or click on the envelope to E-mail us::
