Norfolk Coast Cottage

Visit England Inspection

2012-01-10T23:46:00.003Z

Today we had our annual inspection from the Visit England inspector. All seemed to go very well - inspite of the water board contractors arriving 15 minites before the inspector and starting to dig up the drive and the road outside. We're confident that we will be keeping our 4 stars which was awarded this time last year.

Website redesign

2012-01-05T10:47:00.001Z

After 4 or so years I've finally got round to giving the website a much needed tidy up. We have has comments to the effect 'the cottage was nicer than the photos on the website showed' which in one way is good, but we did need better photos. We will also be adding more testimonials - we now have 3 books full of great reviews but were still showing some from the original few months after we opened.

Autumn Half term

2011-11-03T10:39:00.000Z

We've just spent a week at the cottage ourselves so we could get on with the yearly maintenance tasks. At least that was the idea - the weather was so mild that we managed to get several long walks in. This week we also had a new bathroom flooring put in. The existing baords had to be boarded first before the new vinyl ( lino ? ) could be laid. It was expensive but we are very pleased with the results.

New Toy Corner

2011-01-29T17:26:00.007Z

In the top bedroom we have created a new Toy Corner with some additions to our collection including wooden Steiner style Toddler toys and some charming hand knitted glove puppets from Kenya. The firm favourite though is still the wooden train track with Thomas and his friends chugging along!

Tourist Board Four Star Rating

2011-01-29T17:10:00.003Z

We had some fantastic news last week, the cottage has just been graded as 4 star by the English Tourist Board (Visit England). We are really pleased with the grading and have worked hard to improve comfort and quality each year. This is the first time we have been assesed by Visit England and we were both really anxious about the visit. Paul spent the morning with the assessor who was very helpful and gave us lots of useful advice.

Mundesley Boxing Day Swim

2010-12-26T10:51:00.003Z

Good luck to all 75 boxing day swimmers - Better you than me !

New wooden floor in Living Room

2010-12-20T17:05:00.001Z

Julian, our carpenter, has made a fantastic job on the wooden floor in the living room. He also fitted two new oak doors upstairs so that they now all match! The oak floor with the new mantle-piece and shleves makes the room look cosy and welcoming. We hope that all our guests, old and new, will enjoy this lovely new look.

Roof work finished just before Christmas

2010-12-18T17:02:00.000Z

The roof was finished just before our guests arrived for the Christmas break. Due to the snow and ice Richard wasn't able to work on the roof for several weeks.
Here they are at work on the outbuildings.

Find us on Twitter and FaceBook

2010-12-05T17:07:00.006Z

I have just set up Royal Cottage on Twitter and with a Facebook Page. There is lots of local news and ideas for places to visit and eating out in North Norfolk. I hope you enjoy reading the tweets and please do join in and share your news.

Roof work under way

2010-11-22T12:49:00.002Z

The scaffolding is now up ready for Richard to refelt the cottage roof and outhouses. When he refurbished the top bedroom last year we noticed holes in the felt and tiles that needed replacing. I know that guests won't notice anything new once it has been completed but we hope that it will make the cottage even more snug in the Winter months.

Enjoy Sky+ HD at the cottage

2010-10-12T14:47:00.009+01:00

TV reception in Mundesley can be a problem which is one of the reasons we installed SKY at the cottage. To provide you with an even more enjoyable stay, we have upgraded to Sky+HD with the full channel package including Sports and Movies. The definition quality on the Sports channels is certainly higher and now, if you are not a Sports fan, you can sit back and watch Sky Movies in HD.

Summer update

2010-08-11T22:44:00.003+01:00

It's been quiet on here for a while so here is a short update. Visitors have been coming and going all year and it's been very busy - too busy to do any serious work on the house or garden, that will change in the autumn half term when we should be re-felting the roof and re-seating all of the tiles.

Booking for 2011 is progressing well with 3 of the summer holiday weeks booked already, forcing us to add the 2011 prices to the website.

Spring Garden

2010-04-12T10:20:00.003+01:00

Each year we add a few more spring bulbs to the garden - this years early ones have been in flower for a while now - hopefuly will get time to add a few pictures here soon (but unlikely!).

Booking News

2010-01-31T15:27:00.000Z

We are fully booked from 24th July to 4th September. If you wish to book for the School Summer holidays next year (2011 !) please contact us by December 2010 to secure a place.

2010 is here...

2010-01-01T23:31:00.002Z

We finally finished the cabin room at the cottage - just in time for the 2 sets of guests we had over Christmas and the New Year. We have further alterations planned as now we have much more space into the eves of the roof, we will be able to add some 'built' in cupboard and hanging space. This in turn means that we can remove two more pieces of furniture which don't really fit in at the moment and end up with a larger (and easier to clean) room.

Not often seen

2009-12-14T10:43:00.003Z

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

2009-11-02T11:25:00.005Z

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

2009-10-25T22:24:00.005Z

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

2009-10-03T20:15:00.003+01:00

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

2009-09-07T13:13:00.002+01:00

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

Norfolk Dinosaur Park

2009-09-02T23:24:00.001+01:00

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

2009-08-30T23:17:00.000+01:00

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

2009-08-25T10:04:00.002+01:00

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!

2009-08-09T23:08:00.004+01:00

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?

2009-07-25T22:23:00.000+01:00

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

Can we stay ourselves one day

2009-06-20T22:06:00.004+01:00

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

2009-06-11T19:55:00.001+01:00

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

2009-02-21T19:31:00.001Z

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

Places to visit...

2008-10-28T22:41:00.001Z

There are many varied and interesting places to visit along the North Norfolk Coast. We often find out about places from the comments left in our visitors book (that's another post one day) but seldom have time to visit them.

Once place we do go quite often is Felbrigg Hall, a National Trust property and grounds. There is the Hall itself, Gardens and 520 acres of park and woodland with several nice walks (wellies needed in the winter).

Mundesley Volunteer Lifeboat

2008-09-22T23:28:00.006+01:00

If you take a walk on the beach most Sunday mornings you will see the Mundesley Lifeboat and volunteers being put though their paces. Their new (2006) station is at the south end of the beach. The picture above was taken on the 21 Sep 2008, as you can see, in a virtually flat sea.

From their website ( www.mundesleylifeboat.co.uk )
"Mundesley Volunteer Lifeboat is entirely independent from the RNLI and supported completely by donations from the public. The lifeboat is a "Declared Facility", this means that H.M. Coastguard regard it as being on a par with the RNLI. The Service works closely with other Lifeboats in the area both inshore and offshore, and also with the RAF Search and Rescue Helicopter Squadron now located at Wattisham in Suffolk. "

More about their history, why it's there and how it's paid for can be read here.

Sealed

2008-09-22T22:08:00.004+01:00

It may be a common site further round the coast towards Blakney, but we'd never seen a seal this close to the beach. He / She was taking it's time slowly moving along the shoreline, diving then surfacing a few metres further down. We watched it for a good 30 mins, only vanishing for good when the lifeboat came out for a practice (see next post).