Christmas at the Holiday Cottage

Christmas availability at Barks Holiday Cottage from 22nd December

What's your idea of a perfect Christmas? Some people love having all the relatives round, despite all the work that goes into offering hospitality with all the trimmings. Others want to get away, pretend it's not happening at all. Me? I'm probably moving from the first of these, heading slowly towards the latter!

For a number of years the holiday cottage was booked by family members coming up to visit local friends. They could just about walk across the fields for their family get together. I was slightly nervous at the idea of them staggering back across the moorland after a few glasses of Christmas cheer, but it seemed to work out OK.

This year our booking agents took a booking for Barks Holiday Cottage back in August for a couple and their dog. That's organised, I thought, well done them! Very, very unfortunately, they weren't quite organised enough to take out holiday insurance. This bit is rather sad - one of them has been involved in a bad accident and so they can no longer go away at Christmas. Their deposit, taken by the agents, is non refundable which reminds me to stress the importance of taking out insurance on UK holidays, something people seem not to want to do.

Anyway, the cottage is back on the market for Christmas. It is available for 5 days from 22nd December for £475. There is some flexibility in those dates (however we are already booked for New Year).

We can also be very flexible as to how much we decorate the cottage for our Christmas guests. This year we are thinking we might put a tree on the terrace. We generally do some indoor decorations, unless asked not to, and give our guests a box of chocolates.