Guest reviews and a weekend exploring!

We’re very lucky that we’ve had a number of guest reviews come through over the last few weeks. We’ve talked a bit before about the challenges our guests have had leaving reviews – because cottages.com use a third party feedback site, if a guest has ever opted out of marketing emails from this third party before, they have to go through what feels like a long convoluted process to leave us a review. Thankfully we’ve had several guests who have been kind enough to put the effort in, and we’re now up to 11 reviews on the site, with three coming in over the last fortnight. Reviews mean so much to us as a new rental cottage and we’re so grateful for each one we get.

This weekend as we’ve had family to stay, we’ve taken the opportunity to explore some of the attractions near us. We’re very conscious that we give our guests information about what they can do while here, but we haven’t actually tried every place ourselves. So this weekend we ticked two off the list.

The first was a trip to Beer to visit the Beer Quarry Caves, followed by lunch and a quick walk to the sea at Beer. Beer Quarry Caves is a fantastic place – the chalk stones have been quarried since the Roman times and used in buildings ever since. The stone is particularly good for use in ornate stone carvings as it’s soft when first quarried and doesn’t contain any fossils, and can be seen in many cathedrals around the country (and even in the US!). Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and told us all sorts of stories about life working in the caves, and the role they played supporting smuggling in the area. It’s dog friendly so Evie had great fun sniffing about and splashing through the puddles in the caves. We even saw a few lesser horseshoe bats, although most have left the caves and are enjoying the warm weather outside.

Beer has a pebble beach, littered with fishing boats and rock pools that appear when the tide is out. It’s sheltered by large cliffs that encircle it, offering a lovely view over the beach, and providing walks either east to Seaton or west to Branscombe. It’s a lovely place to stop and paddle, although the water is still a little cold at this time of year!

We also stopped at Chard Reservoir on our way home. Again – somewhere we’ve never visited despite it only being 20 minutes’ drive from Ley Farm. It’s mainly a nature reserve, attracting water birds, bats and other wildlife. The dog-restricted area has a bird hide that looks out across the water – we’ve seen some fabulous photos of birds taken from there. It’s a lovely place to stretch your legs, with a couple of fields to give the dog a run too. We always say we should get out more and explore our area more – perhaps when we get further down the job list…