Posted: Tue, 8 Oct 2013 10:24
When the going gets tough, the tough go brambling. Life's busy and hectic for us all. Most of us whizz around trying to 'fit everything in'. Well last weekend in the glorious Cheshire sunshine, a couple of hours were spent 'brambling'. Armed with plastic tubs, two dogs, two children and one very patient Grandad we foraged and brambled – a highly recommended stress buster.
Brambles were plentiful and I'm almost ashamed to say it was the first time my children had properly 'brambled'! There were shrieks of "Look at this one!", "No, look at how many I have!" and so on. A few hours were whiled away on the quiet lanes of Carden in Cheshire until the boxes were filled and hardly any dropped. All the cottages have great brambling opportunities away from busy roads and traffic and can be bulked our with orchard apples. Both Brassey's and Carden Green have an abundance of apple, damson and plum trees in their gardens.
Church Gates only has one apple tree and a fine crab apple tree, and Church House Eskdale has an orchard planned for next year, if we can ever keep the sheep out!
All our guests are welcome to help themselves to our fruit trees when they stay. It's nice to get permission as if you're old enough to be reading this, you're probably too old to be 'scrumping' too!
Of course that's only half the story. The fruit then has to be washed and prepped and crumbles created. Our own jumbo oats were added to our crumble mix – how cool is that?! Not cool is the way I managed to burn the top layer of the toping, but luckily our topping was generous so this was hastily scraped off whilst the kids were asleep and I was left in charge of cooking and cleaning up duty – being the responsible adult!
A few days were also recently spent checking our newest addition Ca'n Llimoner in Majorca – where the water don't taste like it oughta! Couldn't resist it – say it everytime! Deia is breathtakingly beautiful too. No brambles there that I saw, but guests are welcome to help themselves to lemons from our tree (hence the villa name). Not exactly British crumble possibilities, but sublime with a gin and tonic on the terrace, taking in the views. All great there but more on Majorca in a future blog, still far too much happening in lovely Blighty.
As Autumn starts to bluster in, we've been busy sorting our winter fuel for the log burners and open fires, and generally making our holiday homes cosy for our visitors.
It's also a good time for restocking – from saucepans to whisks, from waste paper baskets to winter pansies – it's the attention to the little things in all our properties that we pride ourselves on. We've had a busy season and we're only a small team so you can be assured of our personal touch, both when you book and when you visit. It's a never-ending but enjoyable journey that we're on.
I love reading our Trip Advisor reviews. I will be heartbroken if we get a negative or poor one. This and the visitor books are our secret addiction and all comments and suggestions are always taken and acted upon if need be. It's a high risk game this Trip Advisor business but I thought we were ready for it. We thrive on pressure so 'bring it on'!
That said, it takes me back to the start of the blog, when life gets too much, too fast or too stressful, book yourself into one of our beautiful 5 star cottages, go brambling and tuck into crumble! It's highly recommended – bliss!
Didy
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