More rainbows

The last few days have been a bit wet - we got a foot of rain in a single day, and we had to drive here using a very indirect route yesterday, so it was good to see a beautiful consequence of it all! This was the most striking rainbow I have ever seen!

It's not the winning...

So last night was the North West Tourism awards. We went down to Liverpool where the awards took place in the magnificent St George's Hall.


Sadly for us the Tourism Web Site of The Year for the North West Award didn't come our way - It went instead to The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. We were just flattered to be competing in such exalted company and we had an ace time.

As the sign post in the picture below sums up - I hope we came close!


The awards were presented by Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen so Linda and Liz were very miffed not to have the chance of going up for a kiss, but everything was alright again when he appeared next to us during the buffet. He really seems a nice guy and he was just soooo charming when they asked if he'd mind having his picture taken with them. It must be a right pain and he was extremely gracious about it.


Liz and Gary who had come with us to lend support were made up when the evening's entertainment started and it was some bloke called Rhydian from the X -factor. They were even happier when they realised that we didn't have a clue who he was (we must be the only people in the country who don't watch it) so they could take the mickey again. He was really good though and he had the perfect setting for his Phantom of the Opera song as you can see below!


All in all we had a great run and we are really proud to have won the Cumbria Award that got us here. And well done M.O.S.I - A worthy winner!

We've had such a lot of fun that maybe we'll try again another year!

Crisis what Crisis

We decided to celebrate the opening of Kingfisher Lodge by going out with our friends Julie and Karen (Check out J&K's Jikiden Reiki site) into Bowness on Saturday night for an Italian meal at Villa Positano on Ash Street - 015394 45663 .

Even though it's hardly peak season just now we weren't able to book a table for Saturday night until 8:45! When we arrived the place was heaving and the staff were coping heroically with a huge number of people. It's a nice place and we had a great evening. No sign of the economic downturn in this restaurant.

We got up this morning and did a quick Dubbs Reservoir 5 miler to make up for the extra garlic bread. There are still a suprising number of flowers out - red campion and cornflowers especially, and the berries and hips keep the trees colourful. We made it before the promised gales put in an appearance.

Back home shortly and then to Liverpool on Wednesday for the finals of the North West Tourism Awards. The other web sites we are up against are all really high quality - so we are a really just going for craic (OK - with a sneaky hope that something amazing could happen). It should be a great evening anyway.

And talking of lovely :-)

We were really pleased to receive some pictures of Windermere Lodge from some recent guests. We got two lovely drawings and four amazing photos.

Here is one of the drawings - you can see why we were very touched!

So sweet to be starting off together :-)

So there we are in Mr Leahy's vast emporium, otherwise known as Tesco Blackpool, buying hundreds of pounds worth of new gear for Kingfisher Lodge. As we check out the lady at the till smiles at Linda and says "it's so nice to start with everything NEW isn't it". Linda catches my eye and simpers at me. "Well we only do it once darling, don't we?". I decide this is not the moment to explain about holiday homes and inventories so simper back "Hopefully sweetheart!"

To continue the romantic mood here is a sunset picture taken at Limefitt Park this weekend

Oops we did it again!

We are really pleased to tell you that we now have ANOTHER lodge that we can offer you.



We are so pleased with the success of Windermere Lodge that last weekend we bought another lodge to be able to offer a different style for our guests.

Kingfisher Lodge is a traditional style 2 bedroom pine lodge and is right beside Trout Beck. We look forward to welcoming new and returning guests! We hope to be welcoming our first guests from 17th October.

In the meantime we are working flat out to make sure that it is as well equipped as Windermere Lodge.

We were really lucky that we did all the business side of the purchase on Saturday when about 2 years worth of rain fell in half an hour. The road to the Kirkstone Pass from Windermere was blocked by a flood and we had to use local knowledge to get past the flood on the side roads. (A sat-nav might have done the same job of course).

When we came to start shifting car loads of stuff it was Sunday and the sun was shining as brightly as it has all year.

We took that as a good omen!