What a year 2023 has been. We have been so lucky to see so many returning guests and always enjoy catching up with all your news.
March saw us retaining our Gold award at the North East Tourism awards for the Best B&B in the North East. In May we were awarded Trip Advisor Travelers Choice “Best of the Best” which is a huge accolade for us. Travelers Choice Best of the Best is the highest honor Trip Advisor offer. The award takes into account the quality and quantity of traveler reviews and ranks the very best accommodations. This is as rated and reviewed by travelers themselves. Travelers Choice “Best of the Best” award winners are among the top 1% of listings on Tripadvisor.
June saw a large envelope arrive. When opened, it revealed an award from The AA and it took us several minutes and re reading it to take in what it was. “Guest Accommodation of the Year, England”. We were totally blown away with this. We have been assessed by the AA for 12 years and have always maintained our 5*Gold award. This includes our “Breakfast & Dinner” awards so to have been nominated, let alone win was a real achievement. Market Cross was also nominated for “Friendliest B&B” category. So all in all 2023 was the year of awards.
Due to our wonderful housekeeper moving on to pastures new in early 2023 our working pattern had to change. This meant we had to reduce the number of evening meals we could offer. This was a really difficult decision for us to make because we know how popular they have been. Unfortunately the practically of concentrating on our core business meant time is always an issue. But, we will always try and accommodate guests for meals if time permits.
As many of you know we try to grow as much of our own fruit as possible. The rhubarb gave us a delicious crop right through till September and was enjoyed as a warm fruit at breakfast. Our apples and plum tree have always had good crops, but this year our pear tree really stood out. It’s only a relatively young tree 6 years old and has only ever given us about 6 pears a year! This year was a bumper crop! so I am hoping that all the pears I have bottled will keep us going into the summer months. We are always looking at what else we can grow and in the summer of 2022 we planted a damson tree. Hopefully this year will see fruit for jam making.
We did have to close earlier this year as we had some major renovations to be done. We can now report that we have a complete new roof. It was a very stressful 6 weeks as November is not the best time of year and unfortunately the weather was not always on our side. However, we are now watertight and we don’t have to worry about leaks now when we get storms.
We are really excited and looking forward to our 2024 season welcoming both old and new guests.
