Our latest wedding, Catherine and Will

Yes our very own Kate and Will wedding...
One of the prettiest weddings that Rob and I have covered...

In Chagford last Saturday. With Reverend Noel Walter officiating.

We took the chance of nipping to our house with bride and groom to take some private photos on the way from church to the reception at Monks Withecombe. Will has an old 1986 Chevrolet bright green Pennsylvania State Police car, which is his pride and joy, and naturally it came in very handy as a wedding car.

This is the first year as a wedding venue at Monks, and I can report that it was every bit as good as I thought it would be. The garden is perfect for special gatherings. Nicky and Simon have large gardens, pretty buildings and space for an any size marquee. There were almost 200 people enjoying the venue, and there was easily room for more.

Catherine chose local girl Sara Mears as the caterer, and Sara certainly came up with the goods.

Now all we have to do is to choose the best 500 shots to give to the happy couple out of over 1,000 in the can. I will shortly be uploading a slide show of pictures that we took on the day.

New reviews and discount vouchers.

It's all go now that the warmer weather is here and the office is manic.

Tom is busy adding further Google analytic facilities, so the we can see how visitors navigate around each page. We already know things like which are the most visited pages, and which ones of our accommodation providers get the most hits, but Tom is hell bent on knowing which bit of each page is working best for us.

It's all very interesting, but I would rather be tripping around the Moor and saying hello to folks. My most recent review is one on the Prince Hall Hotel at Two Bridges. Just look at the view from the top floor. Beautiful.
No chance for us to take time off right now though. We are covering a wedding this weekend, so Rob is checking the cameras as I type. Plus we have the white umbrella already packed into the car. so far, whenever we've taken it, the weather's been fine, so maybe it does have lucky charm properties. Hope so.
Pics next week for you no doubt. Bye for now.... I'm off to polish my wide angle lens.

my latest review on Dartmoor Accommodation

My latest review is of The Coach House at Widecombe. Click here to take a look.

Royal wedding ennui.

With the royal wedding less than 24 hours away it's hard to judge just how involved folks on Dartmoor feel. Usually I am the first to jump into the dressing up box when there is the merest excuse to put on a costume of any sort, but www.dartmooraccommodation.co.uk and www.chagfordshow.com website has taken up so much of my time of late that housework is crying out to be done and it would be rather nice to spend tomorrow completing some of the chores and taking 10 minutes or so out of every hour to watch royal events.
But hey this will be a special occasion won't it ?
A chance for neighbours and friends to mark a great moment in time? I went down to London for both Charles and Di and Andrew and Fregie's weddings, and enjoyed every moment in the city, but look what happened to both of those marriages ...
Sad to admit too that a small part of me is worried about the safety aspect in London tomorrow. With so much hatred in the World, this might be just the occasion that some religous zealot is looking for.
What a misery I sound. Maybe it's because I no longer have any school age children at my skirt urging me to bake red white and blue biscuits.
Most likely by mid morning I will be champing at the bit to nip into Chagford to join the happy throng and wish this eager royal couple all the best along with everyone else and I'll have the camera working overtime to capture the fervour of it all.
It's a sorry thing to admit that it's a toss up between that and cleaning off the green stuff on my greenhouse windows isn't it ?
That my Commonwealth committment has come to this hey ?
Shall have to wait and see what tomorrow brings ...

yet another B&B website uploaded this morning just after midnight !

A lady called Mary Lloyd-Williams got in touch and asked if she could come onto the Dartmoor Accommodation website.
She told me that she had been doing bed and breakfast from her home on the south of the moor since 1983, just one year before we started up in B&B ourselves. She sounded gracious and charming on the phone and her e-mails were nice and chatty. Last week I managed to go and say hello to her and take pictures of her lovely home down a bumpy old farm track at the back of beyond.
As I say in my write up on the site, it's not cutting edge modern. Far from it, but if I was a child ages from 2 to 12 with even the slightest interest in the natural world, this is just the sort of place I should like my family to book into for most of the Summer holidays.
There are ponies in the fild, an inquisitive cat, 2 friendly black labradors Archie and Cobble and there must be hundreds of birds nests within a stones throw of the house. Not that Mary would encourage younsters to throw any stones. Two minutes in her company and I see that she is one of the most charming of Dartmoor's many landladies. We nip out into the garden and she calls to the ponies in the field who come cantering down to say hello to her. She and her husband Dick have a very pretty garden surrounded by trees with a stream running through. Birdsong fills the air and there is a real sense of country retreat about the place. She told me in her first conversation that the house is rather ugly, and I have to take issue with that. The house is very 'her' and the visitors book is rammed with grateful thanks and mentions of how sweet and caring she is.
No it's not straight off the pages of Ideal home, but I'm sure you will enjoy the home made marmalade at breakfast here and if your beloved four year old needs to collect frogspawn to examine it, she is the kind of person who will produce a spare jamjar, be happy to join in with the collecting, and then later on take time to caringly explain why the frogspawn needs to go back into the water again once examination has taken place. I just know it.
Do take a look at the new website http://www.hookscottage.co.uk/ that I built for her. Have I managed to get across to you just what sort of place it is ?

I alerted Mary to take a look and she came back to me with an e-mail saying
'Dear Jill -
Just got back from work to find this FABULOUS website - you really are amazing and we LOVE it. I'll get my family to have a look today too.
The directions are such a wonderful added bonus too.
All my thanks for the fantastic site.
Mary - in haste to get some very nice guests their Full English !'

I just knew that she would be generous in her appraisal.
This job of mine is so enjoyable.
Jill

My latest website and pictures - take a look

I should be organising bills to send out really, but I much prefer to build websites with Tom.

He being young and techy and far more competent on the computer that I will ever be, and me being quite good with the camera and not bad at the Times crossword, (so therefore supposedly wordy) we seem to be having some measure of success. Take a look at the new New Forge website that we launched today and see what you think.

Don't for one minute think that it's all plain sailing though. Unless you understand the vagueries of php versus html and SEO and functionality. Oh and don't forget the keywords and verifying the site !!

Taking the pictures at the cafe was the very easy bit..... if you have a look at the website and I hope that you will, you should see a fresh cream tea with warm scone, home made jam and thick clotted cream at the top of the page..... Tom is that rare creature who doesn't really like sweet stuff, so I walked off with those 2 fat scones oozing cream and jam and they became Rob's pudding that night.....

No, not a bad job ...

The Dartmoor Tearooms are opening for the season again tomorrow, I might just nip in on the pretext that I need some fresh pictures for their new website. You never know .... dessert might get sorted there too. With any luck !!

Bye for now. Jilly

Prince Hall Hotel - I could do with a few days here.

Prince Hall Hotel, almost central on the Moor. I went to take photos for the hotel yesterday. It's about 3 years since I last visited the place and I love what Fi and Chris Daly have done with the place. They haven't lost that English Country House feel. But they have updated some important bits and pieces. The beds are made up with good quality linens and the towels are thick and plump. Just what the customers want. I was busy taking pics of chef David cooking the most succulent fillets of lamb and I happened to glance into the pantry just behind me, and saw something that really lifted my heart. See below. Any English chef of integrity will use quality butter and here is the evidence packed into a giant box of fresh vegetables newly delivered. It always vexes me that Anchor butter travels all the way round the World to come here from New Zealand, and Lurpak is transported from Denmark, when we have the best butter in the world from our very own English cows. We need to support farmers more than ever before in this country. It is a sin that farmers cannot make a decent living from dairy herds, and if only the housewife thought about that each time she tipped New Zealand butter into her trolley our farming community would have a better chance of survival. Oh and by the way, while I think of it. Did you know that 'Silver Spoon' sugar is sugar beet made into sugar in the UK ? They grow acres ad acres of it in Norfolk. So please buy it instead of more well known brands if you want again to support British Farming. OK, I've had my moan now.... chunter over... cheers chaps...