To pastures new

I realise that I was instructed quite clearly to not say anything about our new website for a week – just to be sure it doesn’t fall over; but as most of you will now know asking me to keep quiet about something as exciting as this is like asking the Pope to consider not going to Midnight Mass.

So… I am taking the bull by the horns, willing to accept the consequences of my actions, and announcing that the Little Leaf Guest House website is now live. I will no longer be blogging from Porthminster View – the fateful name of the first B&B we fell in love with – but all blogs can now be viewed and read from the main site: Little Leaf Guest House BLOG.

Do have a browse around the site – tell us what you think, sign up to the blog updates… more importantly share it among your friends, tell people about what we’re doing and maybe come and stay.

Oh… and before you say anything, we know that you’d love to see photos of the rooms but they’re just not ready yet so you’ll have to wait!

Thank you for all your support so far. Welcome to the next leg.

Back in the driving seat

To paraphrase the inimitable words of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall ‘We’re back”. We’re back with so many plans it seems a bit pointless to continue alphabetising them. As I mentioned back on 25th August, we now know what we want, which is an awful lot more than we knew 6 months ago where I was quickly becoming the largest consumer of information on Escape the City, and desperately trying to convince Danny that we should move to France and / or join the circus. It’s nice to not be in that state of flux anymore, even if what we thought was going to be the answer actually isn’t.

Watch out all Cornwall properties in coastal locations, we are now on the hunt. We have 3 lined up already and are taking the now familiar trip down there on 9th September. And yes, we’re aware that’s still 10 days away, and yes, we’re aware that (again) a B&B in the Cotswolds would have been a darn sight easier.

It feels good though. It feels, after the last 5 weeks of ‘up / down’ with regards to getting and then not getting the mortgage, that we are back in control of things. We have a much better understanding of our budget and we really know what we want.

[Well… I know what I want and Danny knows what he wants, those things don’t always coincide and occasionally (last night for example) we stay up till 1am debating the merits of various online tools and booking systems; however, sleepless nights aside we’re much better off than we were a few weeks ago].

I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that we spent the vast majority of the weekend discussing these 3 properties, swinging first towards one, and then towards the other. This was exacerbated by receiving a belated birthday present from my sister – Starting and Running a B&B – which has provided us with endless things to talk about, from being more experimental at breakfast to realising that it’s not that new an idea to provide homemade biscuits in the rooms, and we maybe need to think a bit more about how we are going to differentiate ourselves.

Of the 72 work-free hours we’ve just lived through it would be my guess that we spent at least a third of these talking about our future “B&B Empire”. I suspect that we are becoming quite dull.

In addition to all this excitement, last week we actually had a nibble from a bank about lending us the money. OK, it’s too late for Porthminster View… but to know that we’re close to where we need to be money-wise, well it’s enough to spur us on. We will be running a B&B by Easter – that’s our promise to ourselves, and you.