This, I thought, was the local paper's prediction for our Christmas ahead. That's a little pessimistic I mused and perhaps the homophobic attack is a little too specific. I was reading the local paper's web pages and it was a second or two before I realised that they were trying to tell me two separate headlines, firstly the weather prediction then secondly the attack in Norwich.
Despite this isolated grammatical ambiguity it is fair to say that the EDP (Eastern Daily Press) newspaper is probably the best regional paper that I have seen on my travels. It covers the entire East Anglia region and according to Wikipedia it is the only regional daily paper that out sells the Sun.
In the end the second bout of stormy weather did not materialise choosing instead to batter the south of the Country .... again.
All in all it was an odd Christmas weather wise as apart from that extremely high tide at the beginning of December it was a surprisingly dry couple of months. This was good news for me as I offer to take guests to the Thursford Christmas Show, so they can have a glass of wine and don't have the worry of finding the venue that is situated in a remote village. This year every single guest took me up on the offer and as a result I frequently found myself standing by the entrance waiting to meet them at the end of the show.
This was not a chore as I quite enjoyed standing there amongst pine trees covered in thousands of Christmas tree lights (the pine trees, not me) whilst VERY Christmassy music tumbles out from secluded woodland speakers, all very Disney like. It was also interesting seeing how far some of the coaches had come from, this year Glasgow and Cornwall were the winners.
If you are touched with the cynical gene and/or can't take a little Christmas 'cheeseyness' then I would advise that you don't go to Thursford and perhaps you should stay at home and watch a few guys on TV getting cheap laughs by chucking a few expletives at you. However if you feel that Christmas is about happiness and merriment with a nod of recognition that somewhere in the mix there is Jesus and you also appreciate great (and I mean GREAT) singing and dancing in true old fashioned variety performance style then Thursford is definitely the place for you.
So the last two months of the year bring a lot of business our way and with the evening meals and the trips into the show they are the most intense of the year. But the year is now done, 2013 finished and with no guests over the New Year we have time to reflect on what we have achieved. At this point I will hand over to Alison for the scores on the doors as she lists some of those key statistics like how often the cesspit was emptied or suchlike....
Mike.
2013 at The Old Bakery in numbers and other such trivia
- 209 nights of B&B stays (105 in 2012, 53 in 2011)
- August was once again our busiest month with 42 nights of stays (out of a maximum of 62 ie 31 nights per room is maximum capacity). This compares with 23 in 2012 (in one room).
- February was the only month in which nobody stayed; although in January we only had a one night stay.
- 158 nights of stays in The Bakehouse cottage compared with 113 in 2012. We didn't have any Thursford cast members stay as we have done in the two previous years as we are trialling it to see if we save more on the cost of heating oil and electricity compared to the rent we receive.
- We've served over 400 breakfasts and at least 70 evening meals during the year. 59 evening meals were cooked and served in November and December for our Thursford guests.
- Popular additions to our supper menu this year have been Norfolk Haggis and during the summer, Crab salad with home-grown new potatoes. One couple had our Cromer crab salad three nights out of their stay of four nights!
- The allotment and our garden have provided us with lots of fruit and vegetables that we've used in our meals: potatoes, parsnips, tomatoes ,onions, leeks, carrots, kale, broad beans, rhubarb, figs, apples, raspberries, strawberries, loganberries, blueberries and blackberries.
- We've now bought over 300 jam jars in the last couple of years and have lost track of how much jam, marmalade and chutney we've made - but it is a lot!
- Our most frequent visitors have stayed with us four times (in the space of one year).
- We have 35 nights of B&B stays already booked for 2014 and only 5 of these nights are from new guests.
- Our entry on Late Rooms went live on 4 July and before we even knew it was live we had our first booking for the next night and two hours later a second booking for the 6th of July.
- Since going live on Late Rooms we've had 42 nights of bookings and already 13 nights of bookings from people who stayed once with us via Late Rooms and who are now booking direct for further visits.
- 36 reviews on Trip Advisor and 5 on Late Rooms and all rate us as excellent - woo hoo!
- This year we've gone international with guests from Canada and Belgium in the B&B and from Holland in the cottage.
- We've also had a number of guests from Norfolk staying here again this year.
- Two different families have cycled here this year, one young family from Norwich and the other from Hertfordshire en route to the North Norfolk coast.
- Percy(the pheasant) has been back to visit us again in the last few months (we'd missed him).
We hope that in 2014 we will continue to build on the success and reputation we've built over the last few years. Our first priority needs to be to book us some time out throughout the year to help us keep up our energy and enthusiasm levels so that we can do it all (and more) all over again.
Wishing all our readers a very Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year :)
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