After a few days of having to come to work in the car due to various meetings away from the hotel it was a pleasure to get back on my bike this morning.  I travel to work along the Camel Trail, a converted railway line which runs alongside the estuary, a wonderful way to get to work.  My friend Pete who used to work with us cycled to work too, he took things a little more leisurely than I do so he saw much more than I do!  My spotting is limited to a few rabbits and squirrels but that is certainly better than 2 hours on the underground!

The exercise is really what I cycle for, not being as young as I once was I need to do a bit more to keep on top of the middle aged spread and it certainly saves trying to find the time to go to the gym: just a quick 20 to 25 minutes in the morning and evening does wonders for me.  Sometimes I get asked if it is dangerous or scary on the trail at night, I don’t find it a worry at all, it is very quiet and so long as I keep an eye out for badgers I’m OK.  Pete did hit one once and he definitely came off worse!  His wife was more concerned about the badger, which, incidentally was quite alright.

Once I get to work a quick shower and change and I’m ready for the fray, speaking of which I’d better go and do some more work!

Today was supposed to be a fairly gentle day, a meeting with my Cornish colleagues and our group marketing manager over in Falmouth (I’d planned to get there early to have a swim 1st) and then back to the hotel via a T shirt printer who will hopefully supply the shirts I am providing as sponsorship for the Padstow to Rock swim in aid of macmillan.

I hadn’t reached Truro when my phone rang - a little fire in the kitchen, all the guests outside in the rain and the breakfast chef on oxygen in the back of an ambulance.  Tempting though it was to keep going I dutifully turned around and rushed back to work to see what I could do to help.  Lots of very busy people helping to sort out what was needed for our guests - we couldn’t use the restaurant for breakfast either so we had to feed everyone in the lounge and cafe bar.  Everyone had jumped in to help, the 2 housekeepers were there serving tea and coffee and laying up tables, the rest of the restaurant staff were working like troopers to get around everyone and Wes the sous chef was cooking danish and croissants in the pastry oven as fast as he could to keep up with demand.  A special mention must also go to Joyce, my Ops Manager, who had everyone organised and all the guests looked after following her call at home to say there was a problem.

We did a quick bit of thinking at our morning meeting as to what we could do for our guests tonight - all that was practical really was to do a buffet so the lads worked all day to produce a lovely 3 course dinner with smoked salmon, prawns, crab claws and all sorts of goodies.  Everyone who came in enjoyed it immensly, especially as they all knew the reasons for the buffet.

The fire was really very small but it produced a huge amount of smoke and the kitchen was covered in it, stuck to all the walls.  Tony, my maintenance engineer, rang around a few cleaning companies and found Rob who had cleaned our carpets in the winter.  He arrived with a team of lads and they were all finished by 7pm.  We’ve nearly finished serving dinner now and all will be back to normal.

I must say I am very blessed to have such a team of people around me who will do what these guys have done today to keep the show on the road.  A big thank you to them all.

I didn’t get to hear any news until I got home last night so was unaware of all the trouble “up country” with the really bad weather: we’d had another lovely day with glorious sunshine, even had people up and around the pool again.

My purpose here is to share that Padstow really does have its own microclimate and is generally drier and sunnier than places further inland and further north.  I do have a meterological theory about that but won’t bore you with that here, buy me a pint of Doom Bar when you come down and I may let you know then.

 It’s a little dull just know but we did have a much brighter morning after an early shower, the 5 day forecast is a little mixed but nothing like what the rest of the country has had.  It really is worth making the effort to get down here, the M5 is fine from Taunton at least as my son Tom came back form his school trip to Germany last night and they stopped there so he could give us a ring to say he would be back at about 12.45 am.  Just be prepared for all weathers, there is plenty to do even if you don’t feel it is the right weather to go to the beach.  See you soon!

I was looking at Tim Atkins’ wine column in the Observer magazine on Sunday and it made for some quite scary reading.  He was discussing the 50 best sellers in the UK and it was all leading brands, no individual winemakers got a look in and while the wines are all drinkable they are generally quite bland.  Do have a look at Tim’s article here: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2124467,00.html .

The good news is that we have avoided these bland wines and have put together a really interesting list with some fantastic and original wines.  Not being boastful here because we have worked very closely with Nigel at Wadebridge Wines (http://www.wadebridgewines.co.uk/) to get the list right and balanced.   OK we do have some more commercial wines there too but these allow us to have some more interesting ones - no Moet on the list but the Gosset is stunning!  Have a look at the link on our main site to the winelist and let me know what you think.  Nigel’s site isn’t quite up and running but keep an eye on it and have a good browse later on in the summer.

What a great day in Padstow we had today: sunshine all day long and we even had people swimming in or outdoor pool.  The pool is heated to the high 20s centigrade but it still has to be a good day before people will go in and swim.  One couple spent all day on the loungers up there, a real sun trap and a fantastic oasis of peace and quiet.

With it being a sunny day it did make the rest of the hotel quiet over lunchtime and town was quiet too, I guess everyone headed out for the beaches.  That’s where I would have gone given the chance!

Full house tonight, over the magic 100 so must get back onto the floor ready for the evenings action.

Today has been one to recover from yesterday:  I was greeted with news from Jackie on reception that we had no hot water.  I found that both the new boilers had gone out and wouldn’t relight and no hot water in the tanks.  There not many worse things to find when you have a hotel full of people.

A few phone calls to our boiler installers and I knew the engineers were on their way, all we could do was wait and hope they would find something simple when they arrived.  Jackie and Amy had to bear the brunt of the guests requests and comments about the lack of hot water, after all it is a basic commodity here which we take for granted.  The girls were superb in the way they dealt with this extra pressure and our guests were generally very co-operative.

 If that had been all it would hardly have merited a post but the engineers, Chris and Bear, found nothing wrong with the boilers, they called the manufacturer who sent an engineer who said it was the gas pressure, not the boilers themselves.  More phone calls to National Grid ( no I didn’t know Transco had merged with them either) who came and checked the  pressure on the mains, all OK there but still nothing.  This time I had to call our supplier who had to log the issue with National Grid and told me it would be a 4 to 24 hour response.  This did nothing for my blood pressure but remaining calm I did press upon the lady that we were a hotel that really couldn’t run without hot water, I know it isn’t the same as a hospital but all the same…  After an hour Mark came back with his colleague Justin and after more checking found it was the meter that had siezed.  Not the sort of thing that we keep spares of!  They had a discussion with their supervisor and came up with a cunning and devious plan to get us back on line.  We’ve got to about 5.30 now and people are wanting to shower before dinner.  Mark and Justin came back with some spares later in the evening to fix our problem but had to wait until we had finished serving dinner before we could shut all the gas off.  This was almost the smoothest part of the operation, out with the old, in with the new and we were away, all checked and sound and the boilers fired up 1st time and I was able to get away home knowing we had plenty of hot water just after 11.

This was a great example of all sorts of people going out of their way to help us out of a very sticky situation from our reception team who had to deal with all the guests to the different engineers who really went out of their way come up with ideas to get us back up and running: thank you all!

Welcome to The Met’s new web site, our 3rd version in 6 years and it is amazing how things have changed in the web world, both technologically in what they can do but also in our understanding of how much we need to put into them.  I remember being quite reticent with my 1st web designer when I initially came to Padstow and didn’t really understand how much investment I needed to put into it.  That 1st site still worked reasonably well but I am hoping for great things from this one, especially as it has a link to our online booking system. 

Over the coming days / weeks / months I will share with you what is going on both in the hotel and also around in Padstow.  It is a vibrant town with many things going on all year around.