Lots of work has been done on our new Camping Cabin with one being installed this week on a lovely campsite in Cornwall. More to follow on this next time.

We are currently half way through lambing all our ewes (we are still a farm) The weather has been terrific this year and all mothers and young are doing well.

P

January is a busy time booking all our shows for the coming year and planning changes. We have a new website coming on line shortly and have lots of ideas for that. Entering all the text will need quite a few more days in front of the computer.

I hope we don’t see any more of the white stuff this winter, cold is one thing but snow and ice makes our lives very difficult. For anyone who has ever visited us here in Chipstable, we live in a beautiful area but a bit off the beaten track and at 1000 feet above sea level we do tend to attract the worst of the weather. We did get held up with assembling lodges for customers before Christmas with the weather and Graham had to turn around and come home one morning when the snow was falling thickly around him. Towing a trailer in snowy or icy conditions is not fun. We found a friendly farmer with a barn and had to leave it there for 10 days as there was no way he could  have got the trailer home again.  Luckily the customer was very understanding. Apart from this one everybody else who had ordered lodges were able to enjoy them for the festive season.

We are holding an open day on the 13th February to show off our lodges including our new Square Bear cabin. This is a new design based on our original Scandanavian lodge.

Camping Cabin

Early mornings, very long days,  lots of flask coffee, battling with the weather (mostly sunny and warm this year) meeting lots of lovely and interesting people, answering daft questions, smiling politely at the unruly children, packing up and moving on……..  A summer of activity for us at Barbecue Lodges.

I will miss the shows and look forward to March when we start all over again but it is useful to have more time to write my blog (very neglected over the summer) and catch up on all that paperwork.

Glamping in Style. We have developed our fantastic New Camping Cabin – Camping without Canvas  is the new way forward for caravan and campsites.  With a couple of these lovely cabins situated on on a site they can then be rented out by the night to families who are not your seasoned campers. These cabins look great (from a traditional Finnish design), are warm and dry and can be finished with either bunk beds (to sleep at least 4 people) or as a luxary  room for couples with a double bed.

With prices from just £5500 and a life expectancy of over 20 years owning and renting out these cabins are a sensible business decision.

We have one on display at our site in Somerset to view. We look forward to welcoming you here if you would like a look

Interior camping cabin

We held open lodge last weekend entertaining people from all over the South West with a glass of wine whilst they look at the ins and outs of our lovely barbecue lodges. We often do a site visit to peoples gardens to see where a lodge would look best in their space so it is good to meet people several times, often initially at a show then maybe at an open day and then when we go and install the lodge for them.

Off to a lovely show at Axminster, Devon this weekend, not sure how the England game of football at the weekend will effect attendance on Sunday afternoon though. We shall see…….

Barbecue Lodges at Chettle House in Dorset

We are having a busy few weeks exhibiting at the biggest shows of the year which unfortunately for us all come together over the space of three weeks.

We have had such a great run of weather which makes everything so much easier and certainly brought out the crowds at the Bath and West show this year. We had three days near Exeter for the Devon County Show, then off to Dorset to do a lovely Craft and Garden show at Chettle House Near Blandford over the bank holiday weekend. The first day I shivered in the lodge wearing two jumpers and a couple of coats but the weather warmed up and we had a lovely Sunday and Monday. We packed up om the Monday evening all ready to move on to the Bath and West that night only to find a van had broken down in the only accessible gateway into the garden. Rather a delay on an already very long day but eventually we managed to move on and after setting up in the dark managed to return home some time in the early hours of the morning.

The Bath and West is our only four day show (thankfully) and is always full on. It was great to be visited on the stand by lots of happy barbecue lodge owners who called in to let us know how much they enjoyed their lodges and to share recipes and experiences.

After packing up on the Saturday evening - the lodge took the journey down to Wadebridge in Cornwall to be set up ready for the opening of the show this Thursday the 10th June. I am looking forward to this one as we stay nice and close, the Cornish people are so friendly and I am sure the sun will shine on us again.

After that we are back home  for a couple of weeks to do some work!!

We decided to grab a week away before life got too hectic and took the opportunity of a weeks skiing in France. We were having a fantastic time with brillient conditions and fresh powder snow most mornings when our week was slightly marred by the news of  The Ash Cloud. We tried not to panic (it was only customers who would be dissapointed by not having their lodges fitted!) and wondered about another week on the slopes enjoying the traditional cuisine and sunshine.

In the event we were very lucky and managed to book a train to Paris (train drivers were on strike over that weekend) a romantic 7 hours all sharing a family room in a grotty hotel in Paris, I had never been there before and managed to arrive and leave only seeing the inside of the stations and hotel. Two more very scenic train journeys west to Roscoff and a ferry back to Plymouth. Thankfully a lift with a very kind friend to arrive home only 26 hours later than planned. When I collected the car from the airport the next day I was greeted with a rather surprised ‘Wow – one of the first back’

The holiday is now a distant memory as we keep busy in this lovely sunshine and look forward to this bank holiday weekend where we are exhibiting at Kingston Lacy near Wimborne in Dorset.

After hibernating over the winter I am looking forward to getting out and meeting people, showing them our new log cabins and meeting up with some of the regulars who always come on the stand to see us.

Our new show lodge is mounted on the trailer, well half of it is – the other half collapses down for transportation, it has been well reinforced to prevent it collapsing (half a building with walls that slope outwards is not an easy shape to work with) We are stall awaiting the arrival of one half of the roof but I am assured it will be with us tomorrow (although they did tell me it would be ready last week!)

Looking forward to getting out and about, hopefully see you there

Sue

Anyway the log cabin looks fantastic, beautifully made with that that lovely smell of fresh new wood. We are really looking forward to showing people the range of Garden Offices, Workshops and Garages