Not often seen

Not even Mundesley has escaped the snow. This was the prom late morning - the snow had frozen solid and it was very slippery. Not a great deal of people about as you can see by the footprints...

Alterations

Last week during the half term we started some alterations on the top bedroom. The recent pine cladding has been removed from the walls and we are upgrading the insulation in the walls/ceiling. This should result in a larger space and it's tempting that this should be the master bedroom and not just for kids! In the picture above the horizontal beam and one of the vertical ones are original (c 1850) the rest of the vertical ones were supporting the cladding, these will be removed and the space opened up. More photos after the plasterer has been!

Half term week

This week is our usual time to make any little changes we've been storing up during the year. This year it's the turn of the top bedroom which is getting a new ceiling and upgaded insulation. It's also time for the large pine fire surround in the living room to go.

Weather is still holding up very nicely, It's warm on the beach and the beach fishermen are out in force.

Autumn

After an excellent September weather wise for our guests, the first October visitors have had a windy and chillier start to their stay. I think Autumn has definitely arrived. We have a ragged Virginia Creeper along our side wall which always puts on a great autumn display, (note to self to check the horizontal supports that hold it to the wall over the winter), the picture above isn't ours - I forgot to take a picture this week, hopefully it will still be there next week!

Mundesley art

Mundesley contemporary art happenings in the news read about it here.

Norfolk Dinosaur Park

Not exactly close to the cottage - it's the opposite side of Norwich - is the Norwich Dinosaur Park. A pretty good day out if your children are into dinosaurs (mine are). Although not exactly cheap (roughly £10 per head) you could easily spend most of the day here, food is reasonable but take your own to keep costs down. If you don't want to venture that far there is always the Dinosaur Crazy Golf on the seafront!. Their website is here.

Late Summer beach

At this time of year, just as the children go back to school you can quite easily have large stretches of the beach to yourself. The weather of course can be 'changable' but you can quite often have wonderful bright sunny (and warm) days whislt walking for hours along the beach... anyway, back to the washing up..

Bookings

We've just had our first confirmed booking for Summer 2010, not quite as early as last year though where we had a booking for over a year in advance!

If you were in Mundesly last week you couldn't have failed to notice the invasion of ladybirds. Numbers were still high on Saturday but declining. The one pictured was one of the rear guard taking a break on my shorts. The kids - who used to like them (ladybirds, not my shorts) became rather more concerned about them once being told they can bite, I guess they were running out of greenfly. Ladybirds of the UK ID chart.

It was also the week of the Mundesley festival , having just come back from a week away ourselves we missed all of it - perhaps next year.

Fresh Salad anyone?

Fresh salad at Royal Cottage Mundesley

We had an idea to supply fresh salad for our cottage guests and so have added a small raised bed with (currently) lettuce and radish ready to pick. The lettuce has done so well that it has dwarfed the raddish so they haven't done too well (lesson learned) but the lettuce has done so well we take a few back with us each week. The raised bed we made ourselves from scrap wood - an idea copied from the raised beds at the C21 Mundesley Art Gallery (we even copied the colour too - thanks Sally & Jenny!)

Can we stay ourselves one day

Back garden at Royal Cottage Mundesley

One day it might be nice to stay here ourselves and just relax - rather than just getting it ready for the next guests! We do manage a few weekends here ourselves in the low season but we are usually doing maintenance and improvements with not a lot of time to just sit and relax.

A Fruit Cake to Die for

Visitors are often asking for the recipe to my fruit cake in the Welcome Pack so here goes...

Makes two large loaf tins or 4 smaller ones. I use organic ingredients where possible.

• 6 oz butter
• 1 large tin pineapple
• 12 oz self raising wholemeal flour
• 8 oz brown sugar
• 18 oz Dried Mixed Fruit
• 3 eggs

Melt the butter and sugar in a saucepan. Pour the juice from the pineapple into a large mixing bowl with the dried fruit. Liquidise/blend the pineapple and add to the fruit. Pour in the sugar and butter, beat in the eggs and stir in the flour. Grease 2 x 2lb loaf tins, cook at 160 degrees for 50 mins to 1 hour or until it comes away from the side and cracks on top.

Enjoy!

Signs

Took a photo of this sign in the village today, who knows where it is?