Wine Pub of the Year 2010

Do you remember that we won an award from St Austell for being the Wine Pub of the Year 2010?? Well, we are off on our prize trip this week to Reims sponsored by Champagne de Castelneau combined with a couple of days in Duncan Bannatynes Charlton Spa Hotel when home and a cliff top B & B in North Devon - so next blog I write I'll have a load of things to tell you..........I'm very very glad we're having a week off, we are both exhausted and so far this year whilst we've had a few breaks apart we've only been away together for about 5 days..... So I'm very much looking forward to some time together and away from the pressures of business. Now that a lot of the holidaymakers have gone home we haven't really taken our foot of the gas as yet - yesterday I was at the Kingsbridge show advertising our newly re-furbished upstairs restaurant and it's suitability for functions/weddings etc.

How big??

Ooohhhhh

Happy as pigs in ????

Ok - I'm ready!!

Really good fun and Glo, my bar manager and I made some good contacts I think! Certainly made us think about doing a wedding fair proper.....???  For a previous Big City girl (and I think still one to some extent) I have a real liking for the County Fairs. I've always been quite opinionated about fox hunting and hunting in general but when you start to talk to country people about the ban and the effect its had on local communities etc and I saw a hunt in action yesterday I'm tending to not be so small minded about it............ When I was a very small girl and my Daddy died, my Mum used to send me to Selsey in Sussex to be looked after in the summer holidays by my lovely Auntie Doris & Uncle Edgar. I can remember thinking it was all such a great adventure and you were so safe to walk through the village and to the sea in 'those days'........ and there was always a village fair, and I'm sure it's that memory that triggered so many of the feelings I had yesterday as I browsed round the stalls and 'best  of's' - cakes/flowers/marrows and onions etc etc.   I felt quite weepy at one stage - I think it was the realisation of passing time and old memories.

So there you are - another summer season over and done with - our 3rd! I must say I think it's been very hard work this year for lots of reasons, but as I sit here tonight with a distinct autumnal nip in the air around me I'm grateful that we've done as well as we have and that our customers still rate us and like us. All we must do now is keep in touch with our market conditions, keep on giving our customers what they want: Value, great service and a pub they want to spend time in!!