After all the uncertainty of the last 18 months or so, I am very grateful we have had a season at all this year. Thank you to guests who had to put up with issues with a heating system that had been unused for 6 months; to all those who have kindly stripped beds and left the property in a fit state for our housekeeper to come in and do her bit as safely and efficiently as possible. Thank you also to those who have had to put up with a delayed upgrade due to us not being able to come up to the cottage ourselves for much of 2020. All we have been able to do is introduce you to our new footstool, Byron, who takes pride of place in the sitting room.
Planned upgrades/refurbishments are now underway. The cottage has been given a new paint job outside; the inside will be started in October, and hopefully completed by the end of February; we are replacing all the beds upstairs this year, with the intention of replacing the downstairs beds the following year; also in October we will be replacing the TV and DVD player in the sitting room with a SMART TV and multi region DVD player, which will also take BluRay discs (having already provided a soundbar earlier in the year.) This should prevent some of the problems we had this year with the older TV and FreeSat boxes experiencing a few old age glitches (aren’t we all?). We are also going to provide an HDMI splitter at the front of the TV to avoid guests accidentally unplugging/nudging the connectors at the back if they try to plug in their own Tech.
We had planned to do more work on the outside in October as well, but a broken wrist that is taking a long time to heal, has put paid to that idea, so as we cannot guarantee the weather anyway, we thought we would start on the decorating, and hopefully complete it in late February/early March, ready for next season. Completing the dry stone wall in the bothan will just have to wait!
We will continue to support the International Otter Survival Fund as it is based in Broadford and the occasional appearance of these delightful creatures near the cottage really is the icing on the cake. We are also planning to increase our support for Green issues – using more Who Gives a Crap products and twinning one of our toilets with one in Malawi! Details will be in the cottage or in the Guest Handbook.
