Gull Cottage is our Grade II listed, four-bedroom holiday cottage.
It's in one of the most iconic locations in north Cornwall, with its own terrace overlooking the beautiful harbour and walking distance to pubs & restaurants. Take a look at our Tripadvisor page for reviews: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/VacationRentalReview-g528825-d7089246
For anyone that's caught a stray human wandering onto the terrace to peak at the view, you may be pleased that we continue our two pronged approach - the hedge seems to have taken nicely, offering some privacy, and now . . . . we have a sign ready to be put in place next to the terrace entrance when we're there after the summer season. Lou and I are rather pleased with it 😊
And the last post from our recent visit . . . a lovely neighbour in our terrace has a boat in the harbour. I had the pleasure of going with him to catch his first lobsters of the season :)
And we finally have replaced a badly broken chimney pot to stop rainwater running in and just in time to stop the noisy and messy jackdaws nesting - again.
While doing some spring gardening, we found a nest of slow worms warming themselves under a discarded roof slate in our front garden. Naturally, we popped the slate back and found them still there a day later when we had a sneaky peak :)
We've had some fridge freezer problems. Our last guests reported that the fridge froze 🙁 so we ordered a new fridge freezer. I then thought to replace the thermostat PCB which appeared to fix the fault, so I cancelled the order. Then the fridge decided to misbehave again, so I ordered the same fridge again, only to find they couldn't deliver in time for the next guests. So I then ordered another fridge freezer from Curry's for deliver today. In summary - we have one faulty fridge freezer only three years old, one cancelled, one not yet cancelled and one just delivered.
Curry's brought rather a large truck and so the fridge freezer had to be lugged up the hill, and the old one down again. The fun of Cornwall.
On our last walk the colours in the sea and stormy sky were beautiful, captured, as ever, by Louise.
We've just come back from the cottage having spent our 300th night there. It was mostly work getting the cottage compliant to the latest (very sensible!) government guidelines for safety. Two of the new things are that you can always get out of the cottage without the use of any keys and if a smoke alarm goes off . . . . . it goes off in every room. Horah.
Oh, and we've planted more hedging plants, now we've found a plant that survives the Boscastle Harbour conditions :)
When we started to clear out the cottage in 2019, we found two, cracked stained glass panels, probably from above the front door when the cottage was converted from a fish storage facility into accommodation in 1850. We've had them skillfully repaired by the wonderful Lucian Stained Glass and put them up in our bathroom. A nice little piece of cottage history retained.
The water in the harbour is crystal clear at the moment. On our 39th (!) trip to Gull Cottage, we finally went in for a swim today, courtesy of new wetsuits from Ann's Cottage Surf Shops. It was so refreshing and a lovely way to end the day.
The National Lobster Hatchery is a fascinating place to visit and something we support each year. They've just released hundreds of 'babies' to replenish the stocks off the north Cornish coast 😍
Once the old, disused storage heater came down, so did some of the wall. Whoops. Anyway - here's the before and after pics.
We've got into the Christmas spirit with two events this week; Boscastle Buoys lead us brilliantly yesterday in Christmas carols with the lighting of the Christmas tree opposite the Cobweb, and we had a more exclusive Boscastle Harbour neighbours event lighting the Christmas tree outside the terrace - with home made mince pies and Champagne 😊
The first of three, wifi controlled radiators is installed. In addition to guests adding a bit of heat when they need it, we can turn the radiators on and off remotely, meaning we can warm the cottage before a winter stay for our guests or us - and turn them off to save energy when there's no-one there. The other two will be going in the main bedrooms.
We had a great evening with our Penally Terrace neighbours at the monthly Tintagel bingo evening. I confess to being wrongfooted by our very sweet and kind, elderly competitors. I had no idea bingo was a full-contact sport! Goodness, they were quick. And vocal.
We won . . . . . nothing :)
It's been a busy couple of days. Two new (non-creaky!) beds are in, together with a new rug/carpet. With the new lighting, pictures and redecoration, that's a room we can tick off the list for now.
We have a repaired chimney at last 😃 We're really grateful to our longsuffering guests who have been wonderful in the three weeks we've had the work taking place. The roofers, from local builders George Clemo, were also great!
Hurah! The repair work to our chimney and next doors' roof has started. I may have been up there for a nose around and the view might have been lovely. This all started with Storm Eunice in February - it will be nice to get it all finished.
And we found time to finish fully insulating the loft . . . . some areas had no insulation at all, so we should feel the difference when the colder weather comes.
Today we found a semi-covered area and storm watched outside the harbour. Thunder sounds different outside of a town - it sounded bigger and rumbled on much longer, seemingly chuntering on to itself as it rumbled out to sea. A fantastic experience.
Look at this for a beautiful view of Boscastle harbour; thanks to Daniel Kavanagh Art for sharing. He has many beautiful photos on his page, including many of Boscastle.
The new we**am in the harbour shows the sunset over Warren Point and the cottage tonight on the longest day of the year. The days get shorter tomorrow; only 187 shopping days until Christmas!
The Boscastle community is so good at celebrating big events. A lovely regular guest, Rachel, sent us these pictures of the lighting of the Jubilee beacon and fireworks up at the Willapark coastguard lookout from Thursday night :)
On our very last day the upstairs bathroom is complete with new taps, new bath tiles, new bath panels and a new floor. We're very grateful to Darri who got messed around a bit, but pulled out all the stops for us to finish on our last day. Once again, we're delighted with the cottage's latest improvement. Taps that work - a nice touch for our lovely guests :)
Our self-seeded gladioli look like Bobby-dazzlers in the early evening sun. Today we're planting up under the lounge window: three geraniums and a couple of deep pink sea thrifts. The bees should love us!
For those that have felt they need the strength of Zeus to turn the bath taps on and off . . . they are on their way out, courtesy of Darri (Estuary Building & Plumbing). The bath is being removed and refitted with new taps and sides, and later in the week our new floor should be laid.
One of the pleasures of staying in the cottage is meeting kind and interesting people. This morning we met Clive Knapman who is walking from Land's End to Scotland in eight weeks in support of Medecins Sans Frontieres. His Justgiving page is https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/knappers-2022trek?experiments=donate_now_track_click&successType=StaticDonateButtonClick
We've been met in the cottage by some beautiful wildlife: the swallows and house martins (close cousins who have been flying together this morning) have started to return to Boscastle and a juvenile adder, probably born last August/September walked across our path yesterday evening. (I say born because adders, being from the viper family, are unusual in that they birth live young rather than lay eggs.)
I wonder what we'll see today to distract me from my jobs 😀
We've found a lovely seat and we're confused how we've never seen it before. It's at the end of our path up to the right. It's gone straight in at number 2 of our favourite Boscastle places! Number 1 is, of course, our terrace :)
Penally Terrace
Boscastle
PL350HA
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When we told a pest control bloke about our small, permanently hungry and slightly destructive housemates last year he went an poisoned them all! Our children matched that description and we found more humane ways of controlling them - catch, calm and release. We've adopted the same approach at the cottage 😁. First candidate dealt with . . . . .
Storm Eunice rushing past the front door! And that's not cloud going by, it's sea spray!
Harbour Light Holiday Cottage Boscastle
The Harbour
