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13.May.2008
Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside
I spent last weekend in Yorkshire and it ended up being a bit of a fiasco. I was picked up at Newcastle Central Station after spending the day in Leeds, to head back down to East Yorkshire and a cottage which we had booked for the weekend. To cut a long story short, when we arrived the recently refurbished barn conversion turned out to be nothing of the sort! The ‘recent’ refurbishment was obviously carried out in the last century if the avocado bathroom suite was anything to go by. We decided to move on and checked into a hotel for that evening.
The following day we managed to find an alternative cottage near Bridlington. This one was much more to our liking. What I found particularly interesting was that we ended up on a farm where the buildings had all been converted to a thriving holiday business. The husband and wife team who had the set up had sold their dairy herd several years earlier and had retired to run the existing farm as a holiday business. The wife even provided a fantastic menu which she would serve to your cottage if you so required.
They had also kept on a small number of cows, sheep and machinery which was particularly fascinating for my three year old who loved the idea of staying on a farm. This really showed intuition by the existing farm owners who identified how they could sustain their living going forward.
We spent the day in Bridlington on Saturday and I was fascinated by how busy the town was. Bridlington has invested wisely and has a very clear understanding of its target audience. On our arrival, we were hit by the fantastic smell of fish and chips which filled the air. My daughter was more interested in the pink bucket and spade and getting on the beach to start digging holes and we ended up having a donkey ride along the beach after digging for several hours for buried treasure.
Everything I saw demonstrated a community which was working well to sustain itself and enhance the best of its past. The promenade had been developed several years previously and there was an ongoing project to refurbish the existing Spa for future conferences.
Generally we have as a family looked for thrills and spills for the children in all sorts of exciting and expensive locations and it is good to know that doesn’t always have to be the case, if you can find them in your own back yard.
As our business now focuses increasingly on sustainability, it is great to pick out sustainable success stories in the most unusual locations.