Welcoming back our lovely holiday visitors

From July 4th we have been delighted to welcome back our holiday visitors

View of Field House Farm Cottages from the fields

We opened again to holiday visitors just over six weeks ago and we’re keeping very busy. Here at the coast we are full for the rest of the summer. In York our apartments  are starting to receive some interest, but naturally, everyone is more cautious about city breaks just now. We have undergone Covid 19 training and instigated new cleaning procedures. Happily, our new routines are working well, even though every changeover takes longer than before, incorporating a full deep clean, followed by disinfection of all touch points. We’re delighted to report our visitors are relaxed and comfortable, feeling assured about the safety of their chosen holiday cottage.

High Barn Cottages. One of the first jobs tackled in lock-down was for John and James to paint all the doors, windows , gutters and drainpipes

Field House Farm Cottages

From late March until the end of June, it was just the immediate family at Field House  John, myself, James, Sarah-Jane, Harry and Jack – no-one at High Barn and empty apartments in York.  Fiona and Tilly, so much part of our day to day team, were placed on furlough , whilst the rest of our housekeepers  waited to be recalled. It was really strange  not to have visitors around throughout Spring and early Summer, especially as the sun shone almost continuously and the countryside around us looked glorious.  On the plus side, it gave us time to plan, think about the future of the business and to get many long-standing jobs done.

Just before the Covid 19 lock-down we were busy putting the finishing touches to our new sun-room in The Turnip House.  It faces west and features large picture windows, so makes an ideal place for reading and relaxing, whilst gazing over our nearby fields and the childrens’ play area. It had to be ‘moth-balled’ for the four months until July 4th, when we welcomed our visitors back and were pleased to witness their delighted response to the new layout.

Cottages viewed from the play area showing Hind’s , The Byre and The Turnip House.

Our new sun-room in The Turnip House leading out from the kitchen area

Outside The Turnip House, showing the sun-room area

With time on our hands during lock-down, we set about other projects that were in the pipeline, like enclosing some outdoor space for both Hind’s Cottage and The Byre  which we think has worked well. At one point, with no rain for  weeks on end, the grass looked as if it would never grow, but it’s looking healthy and well established now. 

View of both Hind’s cottage and The Byre with their new enclosed private outdoor space.

High Barn  and York Old Brewery

What else have we done? We’ve kept a close watch over the York Old Brewery apartments, visiting regularly to check all the services functioned whilst they were vacated and everything would be fresh and ready for our first returning visitors in mid July.  John and James became as brown as berries spending the best part of two or three very sunny weeks painting and smartening up the exterior of High Barn.   It’s been fascinating to watch the progress of this year’s clutch of baby Barn Owls in their nest up there. Six eggs were laid, four of them hatched, growing rapidly into beautiful adult birds, all have now have left the nest, but continue to fly around the cottage surroundings.   You can look at them too by going to our You Tube channel 

The play area has been increased in size with paving to the side, plus an extended grassy area.  One long overdue task was to clear out one of our oldest and largest farm buildings and install an indoor table tennis site. It’s not only popular with our visitors, but with the family too!

Our housekeeping team, plus John, enjoy coffee time in the garden on a changeover day, observing careful social distancing.

Now we can say that life here has returned to some sort of normality. Cafes, bars, restaurants, visitor attractions, country house gardens plus many of the York museums and galleries are open again for visitors. Without exception, our visitors have found plenty to do, have not been troubled by crowded areas,  all enjoying experiencing the space and freedom of Yorkshire’s beautiful and varied scenic places.