I would have completely forgotten about Daphne Phelps’ book, “A House in Sicily” if it wasn’t for the mouse. We were doing some spring cleaning (a tip- don’t leave it for five years, things can get out of hand) when I found that a mouse had whiled away an afternoon by chewing away at the edges of a newspaper cutting which I’d roughly inserted into the book. Fortunately, the book itself was unharmed.

“A House in Sicily” is about Casa Cuseni, the Arts and Crafts house and garden created by Robert Kitson in Taormina, Sicily, which Daphne Phelps had inherited and looked after for 50 years. The garden is one of several outstanding gardens in Italy created by English men (and women) and is worthy to be mentioned alongside Thomas Hanbury’s ‘La Mortola’, Lady Walton’s ‘La Mortella’ and Ellen Willmott’s ‘La Boccanegra’, but stands out amongst them in that its name isn’t redolent of death or darkness.

My plans to look at the garden when I visited Taormina a few years ago were unfortunately thwarted by the girl at the Tourist Information Centre, where I’d gone to ask for directions. She looked positively alarmed when I mentioned Casa Cuseni. “You won’t get in”, she said, “And if you try to the owner will shout abuse at you”. The owner in question was Daphne Phelps, the author of the book. She was now elderly, and retired, but for most of her life had run Casa Cuseni as an upmarket guest house. Her instructions to the TiC to deter any potential visitors with threats of abuse was no doubt the result of a lifetime spent in hospitality. I know how she feels. She died the following year, and it was her obituary which I had carelessly inserted into her book and which the mice had chewed at.

When, after swimming several thousand miles, Atlantic salmon reach the Riverside Hotel on the River Kent, they are within sniffing distance of their final destination. It must come as a shock to them to find their way blocked by a weir, which they can’t swim over- they have to jump. None make it at the first attempt and nothing pleases visitors to the Riverside more than watching them try and try again until they finally make the leap over the top.

From there it’s a quick sprint to the spawning ground at Kentmere. Or it used to be. For now, a new hazard has arisen, just above the weir, where a family of hungry otters are waiting to grab the exhausted salmon. Otters are nocturnal creatures, rarely seen, but here at the Riverside there have been numerous sightings this autumn. One lucky guest saw an otter pluck a salmon from the swirling water and settle down to eat it on the river bank. Other guests have seen two new offspring of the otter family playing on the base of the piers to Stramongate Bridge, directly in front of the hotel’s restaurant.

If you can stay at the Riverside, who needs Autumnwatch?

Hoteliers have been gloating since Attack of the Trip Advisors went out. The programme followed a bunch of seriously odd characters as they went about the country on a mission to find fault with whichever place they stayed at, after which they would post nasty reviews on TripAdvisor. It made for very entertaining TV, the funniest of the weirdoes being Ricky, who took his Gran with him on holiday. Gran told the camera that Ricky had been bullied at school and this was his way of getting revenge on society. But if the truth be told, the hoteliers were just as weird as their guests. Daniel Fromm, the producer, whose previous show was the huge hit My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (and who also produced “our” edition of How the Other Half Live) has a genius for finding characters like this.

If you want to see a hotelier spit blood ask him about TripAdvisor. What really upsets people is the unfairness of some of the reviews and the fact they can’t do much about them. A review may be malicious, untrue and posted by a rival and once a nasty review’s up there it’s very difficult to get it down. And reviewers can, and frequently do, use the threat of a bad review to blackmail hoteliers.

Why then, am I a huge fan of the site? The reason is that I see it as the free market in action. Guests can have their say and hoteliers can’t hide behind glossy photos and extravagant testimonials. If the “Sea View” hotel has a view of a car park, the truth will out. On the whole, I think that TripAdvisor tells the truth. The public can see through reviews which have been posted by the hotel and will discount those which are extravagantly brutal. Moreover, and this is the most important point, hoteliers are scared of the reviews and when an uncomfortable truth is revealed they’ll up their game to make things better. In the end, it’s the customer who wins and that can’t be bad – after all, we are customers ourselves.

That’s not to say that TripAdvisor doesn’t need to sharpen up its act, and smartly. It’s intolerable that false or defamatory accusations are allowed to stand, or that if a hotelier has rectified a problem by, for instance, refurbishing a room, reviews that have become out-dated should be allowed to stand. TripAdvisor must never allow hoteliers to call the tune, but they are weakening the brand by being unfair.

Nowadays every restaurant worth its salt proclaims that they are passionate about using local produce. Most of them lie. As a matter of fact 70% of all the food that restaurants use is imported, so there are a lot of porkies being told. But one restaurant which is true to their word, I’m sure, is the lovely Cottage in the Wood and tonight the food was not only local but, for a good part, foraged by hand by the owners, Liam and Kath Berney. The Cottage in the Wood is in the middle of the Whinlatter Forest, overlooking Skiddaw – in other words prime foraging country. I was there for a “Cumbria on a Plate ” dinner, hosted by the fabulous Annette Gibbons and I’m sure that I wasn’t alone in getting a sinking feeling when Annette announced that the menu would revolve around ‘foraging’.

I couldn’t have been more wrong – the meal was delightful – delicious, inventive and just plain different. As an example, a dish of home smoked mackerel was served with foraged herbs and hogweed “capers”. Hogweed is that poisonous plant which grows 18ft tall and which you are supposed to report to the authorities if you see it. But, as Annette pointed out (we were glad of the reassurance), it’s only poisonous if the sap gets on your skin and Liam had collected the berries to create the capers. Another inventive dish was game terrine, made from grouse, pigeon, pheasant and partridge, which was served with damson gin sorbet (damsons are found in the hedgerows in these parts) and hot bon bons. Because wine wouldn’t go with a gin sorbet this was accompanied by Loweswater Gold Beer.

When my elderly mother ate at L’Enclume she proclaimed in a loud voice, so that all the stern, solemn waiters could hear, that the meal was “pretentious rubbish”. There’s nothing pretentious about the Cottage in the Wood. Liam and Kath are enjoying themselves too much and their infectious enthusiasm make an evening there just plain good fun.

The world’s best commute (see http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2010/12/21/the-slow-life-journey-to-work/) has just got a whole lot better now that the Sawrey Hotel has been magically transformed into the Cuckoo Brow Inn. I can take precious little credit for the transformation, but that hasn’t stopped me from lapping up the extravagantly lavish praise which I’ve received from just about everyone in the village of Far Sawrey. The person who deserves the credit is my PA, Sally, who, together with her husband Dan, has been fully responsible for the project, including all the design work. The work started in November last year, since when the 2 Star and rather sad old Sawrey Hotel has been completely gutted and transformed into a 4 star Inn with 14 stylish bedrooms. The work was interrupted for a little while four months ago while Sally gave birth to her baby Florence (http://www.slow-life.co.uk/2011/05/19/the-happiest-smile/), but apart from that she has been indefatigable, and I’m very proud of what she has achieved.

I’ve always admired the way Victorians would build a Folly on their land, which had no other purpose than to look good and be admired. One such Victorian was Alexander Brogden, the owner of Holme Island in Grange who, when he had finished building the Furness railway, built a circular Temple of Vesta in his garden. I came across a photo of the temple while I was doing some research on Grange in the Barrow Records Office and was immediately captivated by it. You get a good view of Holme Island from the Prospect Tower in my garden, and you can see that unfortunately it’s now a ruin. It’s also completely inaccessible on private land.

When I first saw the photo of the temple I thought how wonderful it would be to create something as beautiful. The idea stayed with me, and when I had the chance to buy the land behind the Newby Bridge Hotel, I thought that would be an ideal spot for it. The land, which had at one time been part of the ornamental gardens for Newby Bridge Mansion (as the hotel was formerly), had become completely overgrown, but it was in a commanding position overlooking both the lake and the hotel.

I was told that there was no possible chance of the National Park planners giving me permission to build a modern folly, but, with the thought that the Victorians wouldn’t have been daunted by such a detail, I drew up some plans and put them in. The doubters were wrong and the plans were passed, albeit with the unnecessarily sarcastic comment that it was “more Las Vegas than Lake District”.

It has taken several years, but the building is now finished. I think it’s rather lovely. I’ve called it The Rotunda. It isn’t a folly as such but has a practical, and of course commercial, purpose as a wedding chapel. A licence has been granted for couples to get married in the chapel, but they can also spend their wedding night there, as it can be magically transformed into a bridal suite. There’s a hidden bed, which comes down from a wall; a secret door to a concealed bathroom and a TV which drops down from the ceiling. You can lie on the bed and look at the stars through the glass domed roof. Perhaps the planners did have a point after all when they mentioned Las Vegas.

Tucked away behind the Damson Dene Hotel, underneath the Leisure Club is an old decrepit store room which nobody visits. Walking past earlier today, I was surprised to hear what appeared to be a party going on. I popped my head in and there amongst the old abandoned sofas and mattresses, was the astonishing sight of Wayne sounding very much like Elvis! In fact so much like Elvis, that I wondered for a moment whether he was miming into the microphone. Could this be the same person, who, only a fortnight ago was seen shirtless in his caravan singing an off-key Band of Gold to his faithful dog Fly? This, it turns out, was the key to his clandestine crooning. Wayne had been so shocked to hear his singing voice on TV, that he was determined to get it back into shape. This video shows what a brilliant job he’s done and I think the time is right for him to bring his singing out of the shadows.

“For me Mackies is a Lovemark”
Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi and Saatchi

James Mackie leads a double life. The keyboard player (I should say Hammond player) with the Heroes of She made his name with Madness and The Selector. But when he’s not writing songs or playing at the O2 he runs the best interior design business in north Lancashire. He’s not just one of those designers who points to the “in” colour in the Farrow and Ball chart, he gets down and dirty doing the work himself, with a particular talent for trompe l’oeil. He’s done some brilliant work for me, the latest of which is the interior of the Rotunda at Newby Bridge- about which more in a day or so.

Today is the tenth anniversary of James’ firm, Mackies of Lancaster. James is hosting a bash at his elegant Georgian premises in Dalton Square, Lancaster. It’s a testament to how James is regarded by his clients that the boss of Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, has flown in from New Zealand to say a few words on James’ behalf. James is loved by us all, and I was particularly touched by Kevin’s paean of praise, which I rather wonkily captured on my iPhone.

Crosthwaite is one of the most beautiful villages in England. It’s in the Lake District National Park and happens to be the location of one of my hotels, the Damson Dene. Because it’s in the National Park there are very strict planning regulations, very few planning applications for new buildings are granted every year and those that are, are subject to very strict regulations. One of these is that the roof must be made with Burlington slate. Not any old slate, which might cut the cost by half, but Burlington slate,which is quarried locally and is exactly the right colour. There’s a good reason for this, which is that every house built in the last few hundred years in this area has used Burlington slate. Any other colour would look out of place.

Every house in Crosthwaite, without exception is roofed with Burlington slate. The houses are made of local stone and some of them are whitewashed. I travel through the village nearly every day on my way from Kendal to the Damson Dene and the journey, which takes me through lovely countryside, is a joy, not least because of the vernacular architecture. But now there is a blot on the landscape, or, as Prince Charles would put it, a carbuncle. One of the beautiful old cottages in the village has covered the slate roof with solar panels. They are ugly beyond belief. The sadness is that the local council, who are Lib-dems, and the local MP, who is likewise, all worship at the altar of Green correctness. In their effort to be seen to be Green they overlook the fact that these panels are almost worthless in one of the least sunny parts of England; that they are only being installed because of a taxpayer subsidy and that the cost is added to electricity bills as a stealth tax which is wholly regressive. Both the owner and the local councillors who permitted it should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

“As the lamb had been kept outside and fed on spring grass, the meat had terrific flavour”

These words are attributed in the Daily Telegraph magazine today to Andrew Fairlie, a chef who runs the restaurant at the Gleneagles Hotel. I’m sure he didn’t really say them; the words will have been put into his mouth by some idiotic PR person, but it was particularly stupid of the sub-editor of the Telegraph to lift them from the text and quote them in large bold type, as if they meant something special. The article was attributed to Christopher Hirst. I wonder if, in his journey up from London to Gleneagles he my have looked out of the window and seen sheep in the fields munching on grass and wondered whether there was something unusual in this. Did he think that most sheep are kept indoors and given a diet of- well what does he imagine a sheep eats if it isn’t grass?

If the lamb at the Gleneagles hotel has a “terrific flavour” it will be down to the bred of the sheep, not the fact that it eats grass out of doors. Looking at the photo accompanying the article, the sheep are a breed known as Blackface, which is the most common breed in Scotland. Nothing special there then. The article says that a room at the Gleneagles can be had for the special price of £470 a night, weekdays only. Included in the price is a view, unique to Gleneagles, of sheep grazing outdoors on spring grass.