We’ve now just got the weeks of 20-27 September and 18-25 October available before the clocks go back at the end of October. It’s a great time to visit Grasmere and the Lakes.

These weeks are very popular- autumn is such a glorious time to visit the Lakes, and our cottage with amazing views , all mod cons, spa bath and cosy lounge with log fire could just be perfect for your Lakes holiday.

Grasmere in Autumn- just a short walk from Brockstone Cottage

At £750 for a week, these prime time weeks will surely book up soon. See the lovely autumn colours like these in my photo. I took this on a stroll along Grasmere Lake from White Moss. You can just make out Allan Bank, the white house in the distance, which is now a National Trust House open to the public. For more details of walks from the Brockstone/White Moss area your can read my article on Six Walks From White Moss here

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We’ve cut the rate for last minute bookings for July 2014.

The weeks commencing 19 July and 26 July were £870, but we’ve reduced them to £690. If you can stay for the whole two weeks we can offer further reductions.

July is a great time to visit the Lakes, with lots of special events taking place, as well as all the usually weekly Lake District shows such as the famous Ambleside Sports which always take place on the last Thursday in July. This years it’s 31 July. You can walk to Ambleside Sports from Brockstone cottage for a special Lakeland day out. There’s wrestling, cycling, fell races, hound trails and all the fun of the fair ( including a beer tent of course)

Thanks for this photo to agmcat on flickr .

Photo from Ambleside Sports 2013

At last! Yesterday afternoon we were finally able to access the internet from our Grasmere holiday cottage, Brockstone. I won’t bore you with the whole story. Suffice to say that it has been a long drawn out struggle. BT seem to have a whole new dictionary to explain their actions. How a communications company can fail to communicate so completely with me and their own various departments is very puzzling.

Hours of my life have been wasted following messages in which they told me I MUST be on site between 1 and 6 pm only to be told (after I’d made several furious phone calls) that this could never had happened due to “an engineering plan needing approval”. Ooops- there I go, starting to tell the whole sorry tale. Enough!

I love the conversation I had with my “Special personal BT Advisor”  yesterday who advised me that they were “fast tracking” my connection and that it would definitely be connected sometime before midnight, 24 April, not 30 April as feared, completely ignoring the fact that I had been promised it for 3 April. Oh well, the main thing is that it’s now working, the signal is good, and our guests are very happy.

Bluebells in Rydal Woods, a short walk from Brockstone Cottage

I like to add a picture to every blog post, but a photo of a router doesn’t really look that great, so instead I’m showing you a picture of bluebells in Rydal woods. If you come early in May, these will be looking and smelling wonderful. Did you know that bluebells have a lovely scent? I fell calmer just thinking about them.  Away with all this BT anger- all is well…..

Here’s the last part of the road to Brockstone holiday cottage in the Lake Distirct. Right now this road ( a stretch of the famous old “coffin road” between Rydal and Grasmere) is lined with blackthorn bushes in full blossom. I took this photo on Easter Saturday. Weren’t we lucky with the weather this Easter?

Lots of blossom means there should be a good crop of sloes in the autumn, and , hopefully , several bottles of sloe gin ready for Christmas, as long as I get there before the birds and other sloe pickers!

Our Lake District holiday cottage is booked until Saturday 3 May. There are two weeks still available in May. We’ve just reduced the rate for the week from 3 – 10 May to £590, and the same rate has been applied to the week 17 – 24 May.

If you can’t manage a week, we will consider a short break. The rate is £120 per night, and the minimum stay is 3 nights. Interested?

Find out more about our Lakes holiday cottage with amazing views on this  website, and also via this page that we’ve written.  You’ll find links to other articles about circular walks from our Grasmere holiday cottage, more about things to do in Grasmere and all sorts of useful Lake District information.

There’s now a handy i pod/ i phone docking and charging thingy with a speaker in our Lakes holiday cottage. Just one more little thing to make your holiday even better.

News on the Broadband situation – after months of waiting it seems like installation might be about to happen- watch this space!.

Those of you who live in towns or cities with streets and house numbers probably can’t appreciate the difficulty we’ve been having trying to get Brockstone holiday cottage connected to broadband.

Two weeks ago BT insisted I be at the cottage between 1pm and 6pm to await the engineer who would connect us. I sat there, router at the ready ( yes, the router did arrive on time), with my laptop at my side to set it all up. No show by BT. 5 hours wasted. Phone calls to BT assured me the engineer was on the way. Turns out that the line hadn’t even been connected and was “at the planning stage” but would be “fast tracked” as they “understood my frustration” and were “very sorry that the system had not worked” as I should have been informed of the delay.

Two weeks and many angry phone calls later we are still not there, but we did see an Openreach engineer today who says that the line is now ready to go. We’ll see. Meanwhile, cottage guests are welcome to use the free unlimited broadband at nearby White Moss House.

The i pod dock is now on the dresser.

Still the lovely guests who left today said that the cottage was “just perfect”. They said that sometimes when you check in to your holiday cottage there is something that is slightly disappointing, not quite as good as you hoped, OK, but could be a little bit better. Brockstone holiday cottage was everything they hoped for and maybe even better. Excellent!

The next weeks that we have available are 3- 10 May and 17 – 24 May.

1. On Sunday, the sun will set at 7.45 pm. It will still be light at 8 pm, maybe 8.30. British Summer Time is here!
2. England have finally managed to win a competitive cricket match instead of doing the usual “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”  ( that awful Friday morning in January being the worst )
3. It’s Mothering Sunday this weekend, and I get to see my two sons and my new grandson for Sunday lunch.
4. We get broadband at Brockstone Cottage next week.

That’s enough to be going on with.