Posts Tagged ‘Damson Dene’

Monday, April 26th, 2010

The Swifts have Arrived

swift
The sun was warm but the wind was chill
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes over the frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.

Robert Frost

The first thing I do when I unwrap Country Life on a Wednesday evening is turn to the inside back page and read Carla Carlisle’s column. She never disappoints. I’m indebted to her for this stanza from Robert Frost’s poem, ‘Two Tramps in Mud Time’. Spring may be late and erratic this year, but the swifts have arrived at Damson Dene dead on time as usual. I suppose that when they set off from Africa, or wherever they have spent the winter, they won’t know what the weather is like in the Lyth valley. They depend entirely on flying insects for their food, so if the insects aren’t about because the weather is too cold or too wet, they can’t survive.
The swifts at Damson Dene nest just above the entrance to Reception, which is a bit of a nuisance as we have to clear their droppings from the pathway every day. But no-one minds because it’s a joy to have them around, whatever the weather.

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Damson Day


Damson Day is always held in the middle of April to coincide with the damson blossom which is always such a spectacular sight in the Lyth Valley. Except for this year, when everything, including the blossom, is about a fortnight late. But the weather is trying to catch up- we’ve enjoyed a fortnight of clear skies and Damson Day was no exception. Last year, we had a record attendance of 3,000, which will  almost certainly  be beaten this year. I say “we” because the Damson Dene Hotel is, most appropriately, the event’s main sponsor. Blossom or no blossom, I can’t remember a better atmosphere at the event.

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

A Black Swan on Lake Windermere


A Black Swan is the term which economists use to describe a unexpected and devastating event which scuppers all your plans. The Lake District had its own Black Swan in November when the unprecedented rainfall caused unprecedented floods which frightened away all our tourist trade. This was followed by a family of Black Cygnets when 5 successive snowfalls over as many weeks made certain that the tourists wouldn’t or couldn’t come flooding back.
Some lateral thinking was needed if our businesses were to be saved. We hit upon the idea of ‘Super Sundays’ where hotels would give away their rooms for next to nothing on the first four Sundays of the year. We put the idea to our colleagues and they loved it. So did the public. As soon as ‘Super Sundays’ went public more than 1000 room nights were sold. The idea also caught the imagination of the local TV and the national press. This video is of me being interviewed about Super Sundays for the ITV news and the item was shown on the 6 o’clock news and again at 10.30.

Friday, December 25th, 2009

Christmas Day on Gummer’s How


It was minus 11C at 10am on Christmas morning but the sun was shining.  After several days of snow the hills were glistening white and the scene was so beautiful that I could hardly keep my eyes on the road as I drove to the hotels.  At Damson Dene some guests had built a Snowman, which they inexplicably named Al Gore.
 I took some photos and then, as the road to Newby Bridge took me past Gummer’s How,  and as I was wearing my walking boots, couldn’t resist the temptation to walk to the summit.  The views from the top of Gummer’s How are some of the best in the Lakes- you can see the whole of Lake Windermere with the mountains on one side and Morecambe Bay on the other.  Today,  low cloud covered the lake, but the scene was especially beautiful.  On a summer’s day the hill will be packed with walkers but today, uniquely, I didn’t see a single person on the climb up or on the way down, (possibly because the snow was knee deep in places) but there was one solitary soul at the summit, who turned out to be a good friend, Keith McClure.  
Here is a slideshow of the photos taken on that day, accompanied by ‘What a Beautiful Day “ by the Levellers.

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Terra Madre Day

Rambling Damsons 001[1]
Today is Terra Madre Day and Slow Food is celebrating its 20th anniversary with over 1,000 events in 120 countries. Here in Cumbria we are celebrating with a lunch at the Mason’s Arms, Strawberry Bank, and a walk exploring the Damson orchards of the Lyth Valley.
70 years ago most of the farms in the Lyth valley specialised in damson production and 250 tons were produced. Now the crop is down to barely 20 tons and Slow Food are supporting the Westmorland Damson Association in encouraging farms to re-plant their orchards. Our local fruit is unique, smaller and tastier than other damsons and the conditions here are perfect for its cultivation. There is an orchard at the Damson Dene Hotel and on 29th August this year four of us picked 46 kilos of fruit in an hour. Pictured are Steve and Vicky Dickinson, Peter Jackson (our Chairman) and Mark Richards on the Damson trail, and a basket with some of our August haul, now made into jam. For those Slow Life adherents who don’t have their own damson tree- the hedgerows in the Lyth valley are full of wild damson trees, whose fruit is not only free, but is often left unpicked.

Damsons[1]
Terra Madre – http://www.terramadre.info/pagine/welcome.lasso?n=en&-session=terramadre:D92BD4DB1da411E3D3xGj229FDFD

Slow Food – http://www.slowfood.org.uk

Westmorland Damson Association – http://www.lythdamsons.org.uk/

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Tobias Ellwood- Shadow Minister of Tourism


As there’s an election in the offing we are being courted by the politicians. I spent today with Tobias Ellwood, the Shadow Minister for Culture Media and Sport, whose brief includes tourism. His pitch is that if the Conservatives get in there will, for the first time, be a dedicated Minister of Tourism. Tobias and I were interviewed by ITV news at the Windermere TiC, which the local Lib-Dem council are planning to close (see Oct 16th posting). The TiC Manager said he was utterly non-plussed by the closure proposal as they get 1,000 plus visitors through their doors every day in summer. Tobias made all the right noises, short of an actual pledge to keep them open.
In the evening we hosted a dinner for 60 at the Damson Dene, with Tobias and Gareth McKeever as the guest speakers. The best line came from Yvonne, the Head Receptionist at the Damson Dene who said she was delighted to meet the Shadow Minister, if only because when he became the real Minister she could say that she knew him when he was a shadow of his former self.
The video shows the Lookaround piece on ITV News, which features Tobias’ interview, starting off with short clips of Colin Monk and myself.

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Lakes Hospitality Association Interiors Show

atkinsons
When the water level on Lake Windermere rose by 9ft on Friday, closing the roads to Ambleside, there seemed to be little prospect of opening the Interiors Show at the Low Wood Hotel on the shores of the Lake as planned on the Monday morning. Cancellation would have been disastrous for Lakes Hospitality as the Show is one of the two big money events of the year. But nothing fazes Gail, the Show’s indefatigable organisor and when the roads re-opened over the weekend she declared “Business as usual”. All the exhibitors made it, but we had the bizarre experience of hearing the event being trailed on the local radio news only for the traffic bulletin which followed the news advising people not to travel to the Lakes because of the weather.
I was pleased to see Ian Steel at the J. Atkinson and Son stand, not least because he was generously supplying everyone with free cups of his excellent Java and Elephant coffees. Ian was in jubilant spirits, holding aloft a copy of the Independent, in which his coffee shop (founded as the Grasshopper Tea Warehouse in 1837) had just been named as one of the best 50 food shops in the country. Here’s the link- http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/food-drink/the-50-best-food-shops-1823609.html?action=Popup&ino=39. I got chatting to Ian about my “Do One Thing” campaign and he told me about his brilliant “one fell scoop” idea. The way it works is that instead of supplying coffee to his commercial customers in individual sachets, he supplies it in bulk together with a scoop which measures out the quantity which would have been in the sachet. This saves him a fortune in the time saved by not having to fill the sachets and the cost of the sachets themselves. All his customers love it and he has the added satisfaction of saving the world into the bargain. Very Slow Life.

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Flip Video

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify” Thoreau
The essence of the Slow Life is simplicity. Some people have decided that to pursue the Slow Life they have to eschew technology. They crave the simple life before progress made it complicated. For my part I love progress, I love technology but I love it best when it’s simple. Most innovative products can’t resist the temptation to over-complicate and to add every possible feature, most of which the average customer doesn’t want or need.
The Flip video is the epitome of good simple design. It’s a small video camera, not much bigger than a mobile phone, which only has two functions- Record and Play Back. There’s a built in USB port which plugs directly into the computer which automatically downloads the videos, without the need for software. The Flip is so good I’ve bought five of them- one for me, one for each of the hotels and on for the Heroes of She. For the hotels the Flip is a simple and very effective marketing tool. When a guest is saying how much they’ve enjoyed their stay the receptionist can record them without any fuss and then post the video on the website. Seeing people actually speaking spontaneously and sincerely is much more effective than just reading words in cold print. I think we are the first hotel to be doing this but the idea is so simple and effective that I’m sure it will soon be the norm. All power to the Flip- the epitome of Slow Life technology.

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Do One Thing


I’ve signed up all the hotels to the Guardian’s 10:10 campaign – to cut energy consumption by 10% in 2010. Some members of staff are already totally enthusiastic about all things green, but we needed to get everyone involved and to get them thinking about their responsibilities and about what they could do on a personal level. The, ‘do one thing’ campaign asks every member of staff to think about their routine and to come up with an idea to help the environment. The idea is that if we all ‘do one thing’ then collectively we can make a difference. With a bribe of a box of fair trade chocolates for the best idea the campaign has been a great success. Everyone has been talking about what they can do and here is a video with some of their ideas.