Golden Sands blog

Lanhydrock

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 16:00:00 GMT

Lanhydrock is a Victorian country house now owned by the National Trust. It's easy to get to via Wadebridge, lying just the other side of Bodmin, and on the day we went, it was nice to have some shelter from the showers, When the sun came out, though, the gardens were just as interesting. Formal gardens near the house, then some really nice ones further away.

Comments below are customisable. You can select to allow unregistered users to post a comment on one of your blogs, or you can arrange that only users who have registered with your site can do so. You can allow comments to be posted as soon as they are made, or cause them to be held in a queue until you approve them. You can allow only a single thread of comments to be posted, or you can allow each comment to receive its own comments, in a nested fashion.

The comments below are moderated and need approval before being posted online. This is probably the setting you would prefer. But no registration is required in this particular instance, just a name and email address, and nesting of comments is allowed. This allows your past visitors to keep up with the news at a location they know and probably have fond memories of, and even to interact with other past visitors, giving you valuable feedback.

Sand in Spring

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 12:53:00 GMT

The sun is out, the air is warm and the smell of the sea makes you want to fill your lungs with a westerly breeze that has travelled thousands of miles across open ocean to reach you. And best of all, you have almost the entire beach to youreself.

But I bet you can write a better blog than this.

Endless sand.

Squirrel

Mon, 03 Mar 2014 17:59:00 GMT

As everybody knows, leaving food out for the birds can attract other creatures as well, but few are as audacious or as athletic as the squirrels that are often seen in the grounds of our cottages, particularly in the spring.

The photographs in this blog are all stills, but videos can easily be included as well.

Tags are a useful feature. Each of these blog articles is tagged with a keyword, and by clicking one of these tags, a list appears of all the pages and articles with the same tag. For example, by clicking the tag 'wildlife', a page is loaded with links to this blog post and to the 'Little egret' post.

Beach walks

Sat, 01 Mar 2014 16:34:00 GMT

Taking a long walk along a beach is one of the most pleasurable things, particularly when you have the shore to yourselves. No desk to hide behind, no emails to attend to, no train to catch - just the sound of the waves and the sea air blowing against your face.

This is a blog to showcase all of those things that go to make up the mountain of reasons that exist for a couple, or a family, or even a single person, to spend a week or two at your cottage in spring or autumn, to escape from the daily grind. Or perhaps a group of friends, hoping for some relaxation and some time to share thoughts and experiences.

The long shadows of a pleasant afternoon in early autumn

Little egret

Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:08:00 GMT

As the picture below shows, some inhabitants of your local nature reserve may be quite happy to have their photographs taken, as long as you don't frighten away the fish. This photograph was taken on the Isle of Wight.

Little egrets were once common in Britain but over-hunting during the medieval period may have contributed to their disappearance from these shores for many centuries. During the nineteen-eighties, however, they reappeared and now, as well as autumn and winter visitors from the continent, there are even some breeding pairs in some parts of southern England.

Footpaths extend for miles around the Camel estuary and it isn't hard to imagine the diversity of wildlife that might exist. Come and have a look for youself. Golden Sands cottages are fully centrally-heated, for those magical winter months.

In another blog post about beach walks, and one about Cornwall's industrial and prehistoric heritage, nested comments have been allowed. Here, just for illustration, they are not. The choice it entirely up to you. Individual comments do not have a 'reply' button next to them and visitors can only comment on the main blog, not on other comments by visitors. This behaviour can be adjusted for each blog post.

Tags are another useful feature. Each of these blog articles is tagged with a keyword, and by clicking one of these tags, a list of all the pages and articles with this tag is displayed. For example, by clicking the tag 'wildlife', a page is loaded with links to this blog post and to the 'Squirrel' blog post.

Heritage

Thu, 16 Jan 2014 08:00:00 GMT

Cornwall abounds with the heritage of its industrial past. Tin mining has been a part of the Cornish way of life since the Roman occupation two thousand years ago and the north coast particularly so. There are old mineworkings to be seen on Bodmin moor as well as in the area west of St Ives, as pictured here.

On Bodmin moor, relics of the industrial age and the prehistoric age lie side by side. Near the village of Minions, an old abandoned tin mine can be found in proximity to three Bronze Age stone circles, known as the Hurlers.

Visitors to Bodmin Moor may feel an unbridgeable gulf between the unhewn stone circles of a seemimgly alien religion and the technological achievements of today. But others might sense that a direct line exists from the geometric and stone-moving achievements of the Bronze Age, the tin mines and the modern world that we see today.