We are lucky to occasionally have a few musicians over in the house annexe to rehearse: a rock/folk acoustic crowd. Yesterday was one of those days and a lovely mix of mandolin, flute, keyboards, hurdy-gurdy and drums floated across the garden.
Check out: www.celtechmusic.com and www.dragonsfly.org

Several days now of balmy sunny days. Feels like summer has arrived in the gorge and we plan for a first pub garden pint later. The flip side is that we probably need rain for the region, but luckily all our rainwater harvesting systems are full: the big underground tank (4,000 litres), several 1000 litre IBC containers and a host of smaller butts. Last year at around this time we hit a long dry spell and so we have learnt not to assume more rain will come and top everything up and so are more prudent using it all.

Some friends currently staying in and testing the cottage went for a walk above the gorge and came across a new born goat kid that looked to be abandoned by it mother who was wandering off with two stronger siblings. The left it alone but later went back to check and cleary the runt had been left behind and it was visibly weakening. So they brought it back and we rang the wonderful Secret World animal sanctuary who said we'd done the right thing and to bring it over. It has now been bottle fed and is stronger by the day. Oh - and very cute.
See pictures here http://www.secretworld.org/blog/?attachment_id=1997 and here https://twitter.com/#!/SWWR/status/181443130787237888/photo/1

If staying here then Secret World is a great place to visit if you love anmials and wildlife.  

All being well we are on target to open for business from Easter 2012 (6th April). Not sure how fast things will pick up, maybe slowly, but a bottle of (organic) bubbles for our first guests.

Gorge View Cottage is now up in the Visit Britain and Enjoy England websites. We are waiting to get our formal star rating and Green Tourism assessment.

Final bits of furniture on order and arriving at the end of the month. We'll get some more accurate photos up after that.