Christmas festivities start in Parwich

The Parwich Church, Hall & Legion are holding there Christmas Fayre on Sunday 4th December. The fayre will be opened by the Deputy Mayor, Councillor Denise Brown at 3pm. The church is open 3 – 5pm, the Hall and Legion 4-6pm. The Chameleon Choral Coir will perform in the Hall and the Legion and there will be lots of stalls with gifts decorations, cards, wreaths, homemade food raffles and homemade crafts and much more. A BBq is planned and there will be mulled wine in the church. To support the fayre we have put a decorated Christmas Tree from Orchard Farm and Tom and Douglas’s guests.

Availability in June Tom’s Barn

Due to unforeseen circumstances Tom’s Barn is now available 24 June to 1 July 2016.

Short Breaks available in May

Douglas’s Barn is available to book for short breaks 3 or 4 nights between 2 and 20 May 2016. Bookings usually start on a Monday or a Friday but if you want a break that starts on a different day get in touch. We are very flexible with bookings.

Additional attractions with Privilege Card

There are some new attractions added to the list of treats available with the Premier Cottages special privileges card. Amongst them are Renishaw Hall, Thornbridge Hall Gardens (new discounts), Hassop Station Cafe, Village Green Cafe Eyam, Carsington Water Sports and Leisure, Hartington Cheese Shop.

Tom’s Barn and Douglas’s Barn join Friends of the Peak

We have recently as a business joined Friends of the Peak. This charity is run and managed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and its aim is to safeguard the landscapes of Britain’s first and most beautiful national park.
They challenge and campaign against developments that threaten the Peak District’s beauty and tranquillity.They support homes for local people, sustainable jobs and local services.
Climate change is the biggest threat to our countryside and Friends of the Peak champion suitable renewable energy, environmental building design and green transport schemes in the national park.

In support of the charity we have added an optional extra for our guests, at the time of booking, to donate £1 to support the Peak Pound Partnership which helps to raise funds for the work to protect and enhance the Peak District landscape and support rural communities. In addition there are collecting tins in the barns for people to donate small change.
More details about the Friends of The Peak and there work can be found at www.friendsofthepeak.org.uk

Happy New Year

Happy new year to everyone, hoping it is going to be a good one! We have nearly completed our 1st year here at Tom’s Barn and Douglas’s Barn and what a great year it has been. Met some lovely people, lovely well behaved dogs and a few beautiful babies. Looking forward to the coming year and welcoming back returning and new guests to this lovely idyllic part of the Peak District.The bookings are starting to come in so worth planning your visits early to avoid disappointment. If there is anything you are not sure about regarding bookings etc please give me a ring. We are really flexible on periods of stay. Hope to see you all here soon Angela and Robert

Happy 450th Birthday, Shakespeare!

Each weekend for the past month has been a lovely flurry of entertaining friends and family and being entertained by friends and family…

And so it continues. We are in Banbury this weekend for a happy reunion lunch with old friends from South Africa, by way of Stratford where nearly a year ago a group of us had booked to see Henry IV Part 1.

The date was chosen at random, little realising that this weekend Stratford would be given over to celebrating the 450th birthday of William Shakespeare.

Tipped off in time, we all parked and rode which was a wise move as from early in the morning Stratford was very busy, with many streets given over to processions and various jollities, all (fortunately) in the warm sunshine.

There was a lovely atmosphere – happy, relaxed and smiley with everybody enjoying the fun. A man was creating giant soap bubbles which entranced not only the children, as the wonderful shapes floated overhead, reflecting the river and the trees; there were little groups of singers and dancers, and we were privileged to listen to a group of singers from the Birmingham Conservatoire who were singing madrigals, quite beautifully, in the theatre corridor.

The RSC was holding a series of workshops in a marquee and as we waited for our matinee to start John and I briefly attended a workshop on stage fighting (as watchers rather than partakers in case you were wondering…). It certainly gave us an insight into what goes into the stage fighting we were about to witness.

Henry 1V Part 1 (Part 2 for us will be later in the Summer) was the reason we were here at all to enjoy all these scenes and activities.

Apparently according to RSC Artistic Director Gregory Doran, Henry IV Parts I and II are two of Shakespeare’s greatest plays but it is not a play we had seen or knew anything much about. I found it surprisingly easy to read beforehand and of course all the scenes with Falstaff (Antony Sher) mean there are as many laughs as ‘tragic’ scenes.

We sat three rows from the stage, at ground level, so almost felt part of the action: we were all gripped from start to finish. Antony Sher as Falstaff was predictably quite superb. Alex Hassell as Prince Henry was good; I wasn’t so sure about Hotspur, played by Trevor White. To me he overdid the ‘hotspurish’ nature to the extent that Hotspur came over as childish and almost manic. This didn’t fit the picture of the brave and heroic man that King Henry compared so favourably to his own disappointing and dissolute son, Prince Hal – who despite his failings came over as the more attractive.

It would be interesting to know what any of you reading this, who have seen this production of Henry 1V think. Perhaps when I listen to the talk by the Artistic Director I will eat my ignorant words and edit this whole section!

Happy New Year!

Our blog and our Facebook Page activity has been strangely static recently, which I really regret. It is nothing personal, nothing other than other excitements and responsibilities that can happen over Christmas with a happy houseful. We have never been less than seven and and recently nine in the house which means with the barns as well, a fair amount of washing and baking, not to mention opening of presents, prolonged meals and silly card games after supper – and even the odd walk in the rain! And talking of washing, we have all noticed our clothes are tending to shrink – it must be because we are having to use the dryer rather than hang them outside?

Our Australian contingent is over, to our joy: Sara, Derek and young Tom who is now 8. Last time they were here we had prolonged snow over their entire stay; this time it has never stopped raining. Let’s hope their next visit we have prolonged unnaturally fine weather!

We have had a lovely, family time. However, we thought at first that we might have a cat crisis/tragedy on our hands as Boots our much loved Orchard Farm puss seemed to be rapidly going downhill, a diagnosis the first visit to the vet confirmed, with thinly veiled warnings that the final sleep might be hanging over her. However, four trips to the vets later, antibiotics and various injections, tempting morsels of turkey and ham (will she ever go back to those pouches of nameless cat food?) and she is making terrific progress but she is very old and we accept that we can’t expect her to go on for ever but meanwhile she is enjoying her recovery, as are we.

Soon other realities will kick in – marmalade making and tax returns and the annual Quality in Tourism inspection, which has tightened up its standards we are told. Meanwhile, with new Year looming the strange Christmas- New Year ‘no man’s land’ continues…

Happy New Year to one and all.

The Dreaded Inspectors Drop in on Douglas’s Barn

The mystery shoppers are at it again, honing in again on Douglas’s Barn, where we last stayed almost a year ago, in November 2011. We get wonderfully appreciative comments from all our guests but there is always the sneaky worry that they are just being polite. And of course, we do just want to make absolutely sure everything is as good as we can make it and there is nothing like the owners’ critical eye.

Are our lovely guests just being polite? we wondered, and having a spare midweek short break without a booking this week we decided this was the signal for another hard-hitting personal inspection.

So in we moved in, from next door (a nicely green ‘car-free’ journey) to see how we would fare, with the aim once again of trying absolutely everything out, from boot dryers to using our brand new TV (wih HD) and Sky (where I quickly became unstuck, ditto the microwave) which is quite sobering. How do our poor guests cope? We have a file with all the manuals, conveniently placed in the drawer beneath the microwave, but apart from needing an advanced degree in Microwave technology and accompanying jargon, a month or two of spare time would help.

Note one to ourselves: to make sure we know how to work everything and can produce a short, summarised, easy to follow instruction. We’re already working on it.

We cooked a full meal, using the oven and grill, electric beaters (I’m sure the misshapen cake was my fault), the electronic scales, several saucepans and a cake tin, measuring jug etc etc. So far so good: except the electric beaters looked very tired and smelled a bit hot after a minute or two; the ‘leather’ place mats didn’t pass muster, we discovered under a bright light one of the wine glasses to be slightly chipped so…

Note 2: Compile a (long) shopping list for urgent replacements.

We already knew it was time for our six monthly ‘decor spruce up’ and had arranged with Jason Fowkes, our wonderful decorator, to come on an inspection of walls and paintwork so we could plan what to do. Jason is excellent also as consultant. He has an artistic eye and very high standards, and as he is in close contact with so many really super properties he has a keen idea of what works well.

So he has been hard at work all day and is coming back for another, just making everything as smart and bright as possible. We identified together that the bathroom flooring needs replacing, probably with tiles, and we are hoping our joiner, David Goldstraw, will make us a nice wooden side panel for the bath to replace the original one that came with the bath six years ago.

Note 3: Add to our list of things we need to achieve (we have been waiting six months now for our courtyard to be resurfaced, Shaun needs a reminder…)

Finally, I must admit that we were very warm in Douglas’s Barn, coming as we do from our draughty, old and distinctly coolish house. With the oven going, saucepans on the hob, central heating on with all the radiators full bore, we were soon down to t-shirts and going outside for a quick cool down/breath of fresh air. So now we have learnt, to turn the radiators down to the lowest setting and not to rely on more than one sweater! Modern house insulation is a wonderful thing, and a very novel experience for us… We’ll certainly advise our guests not to have the radiators turned up too high (thank goodness they all have an individual thermostat).

We still have another night, before shortly moving the microscope onto Tom’s Barn. No peace for the wicked.

Two Country Mice from Parwich go to London

Every so often John and I are lucky enough to hit the highlights and enjoy a pleasure driven weekend in London, thanks to our London-based young and their many friends. It doesn’t take much to find an excuse for a visit; this weekend our daughter Ruthie was singing in a concert with the Addison Singers. Being fond and proud groupies we were delighted to be able to go; and even more delighted when Ruthie suggest she also get us all tickets on the Friday night before, for ‘A Chorus of Disapproval’ one of Alan Ayckbourn’s terrific plays we were lucky enough to see when it first came out, in the Theatre in the Round, Scarborough, in the days when we lived in Scarborough.

It is on at the Harold Pinter Theatre, directed by Trevor Nunn, with Rob Brydon in the key role as Dafydd ap Llewellyn the long-suffering Welshman trying against the odds to produce an amateur production of the Beggars’ Opera. The play within the play reflects the similarities between the pimps, prostitutes and minor criminals of the 18th play and the would-be actors of the current version. The whole is clever, witty and very funny and we would whole-heartedly recommend it.

As we would also the Thai meal we enjoyed beforehand, at the Busaba Ethai, almost opposite the theatre. The food was good and the service attentive; this was slightly marred for us by John’s overhearing the waiters’ team briefing when we arrived (for a pre theatre meal). ‘ Be very charming, make lots of money!’ the manager was exhorting… As everything was pretty expensive anyway, we didn’t see the need for any extra charm.

The concert was superb, by any standards. St Peter’s Church, Notting Hill, was full to the brim; one of Ruth’s and our friends found herself talking music to the interesting man sitting next to her, who turned out to be the Master of the Queen’s Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who had come to hear the London premiere of ‘Proverb’, his own recent work! The main feature was the Mozart Requiem; there were several other works including Mozart’s Ave Verum corpus and Proverb (see above!).

While waiting for our train back to Derbyshire on Sunday, we decided to have a coffee in the St Pancras Hotel, in what is still called ‘The Booking Office’ (do you remember it?). St Pancras is such a delight anyway: every time I find myself there I feel privileged and grateful to the likes of Sir John Betjeman who prevented it all being rased to the ground and replaced with some ghastly modern monstrosity.

We hadn’t been to the hotel before. Next time we shall go for a cocktail – or you could have afternoon tea. Our coffee was a delightful experience. We were impeccably served by charming waitresses in very neat uniforms whom one could have mistaken for an air hostess. John’s meringue turned out to be the size of a small loaf of bread, very tactfully served with two knives and forks, so with very little reluctance I helped John make short work of it. We did feel the the embarrassing pile of meringue crumbs underneath us might perhaps have lowered the tone somewhat!

Finally, I must mention the Christmas lights. We had not given them a thought, so when the bus turned into Oxford Street John and I were like little children, totally overwhelmed, and John who is hardly ever without his camera was cursing the fact he hadn’t brought it.

We had to make do with mine, which unknowingly I had set on video mode (you can see what an expert I am…). Anyway, it does capture a little of the atmosphere as seen from the top of the 94 bus but sadly I have failed tonight to upload them onto this post!!