Archive for category Advertisers

10th-12th September Heddon Valley Music Beerfest

Sep 8

Posted by elisa in Advertisers, Availability, Coast, Cottages Search, Devon, Events, Festivals, Group holidays | No Comments

A long weekend of music, cask ale and cider tasting takes place at the Hunters Inn in the beautiful Heddon Valley this weekend.

The event is free and it’s not just an excuse to drink as there are also arts and craft stalls, face painting and a best of the fest photo competition!

Friday 10th

The Heddon Valley Stumblers

Simon Darling

Sam Chalkley & James Walden

The Garden Club

Saturday 11th

Green & Bushell

Truffetete,

‘Parracombe’s Got Talent’ (Childrens Show)

Chilly Breeze

Pluko

The Dastards

Severe Zero

Sunday 12th

Quebec Ensemble

3’s Company

Jenna Witts

Maple Canyon

Jim Jones

Lazy,

The Funkinsteins

Basils Blues Band

Entry is free and starts at 6pm on Friday then from noon on Saturday and Sunday.

For more information go to the main website.

If a large group of you are going, how about trying out this Helpful Holidays cottage in the area that sleeps 14. A luxurious farmhouse that has an indoor heated swimming pool! The property is surrounded by 10 acres of garden and has barbecue facilities if the weather is fine. There are plenty of walks in the area, you can also go to see the sea at Heddon’s Mouth at the end of the valley.

27 West Country beaches awarded prestigious Blue Flag

Aug 3

Posted by elisa in Advertisers, Availability, Coast, Tourist Board, West Country | No Comments

Good news for the West Country as 27 of its beaches have been awarded with a Blue Flag.

The prestigious award is given to beaches that meet a list of 32 pieces of criteria including Environmental Education and Information, Water Quality, Environmental Management, Safety and Services. The award is given per season so it’s good news for the summer in the West Country this year and will surely reassure tourists considering visiting the region of its high quality.

One such beach that has received a blue flag is the beautiful Blackpool Sands in West Hams, it has a mediterranean feel and a beautiful wooded backdrop and a brilliant cafe, Venus Beach Cafe.

To view the list of beaches awarded click here.

If you fancy a last minute summer break in a holiday cottage, click here for the main site to view properties that are still available.

With a week near the end of August and into September, 13 Great Cliff in Dawlish might be a perfect retreat. A 2 bedroom 2nd floor apartment, sleeps 4. A very well equipped interior with 1 en-suite bedroom. Off-road parking, intercom and lift. Sweeping sea views in a central location. Level one minute walk from the village centre. Prices vary from £579 to £929 depending on the season. Check out the link here for more information.

Main Photo

Royal Bath & West Show 2nd-5th June

May 17

Posted by elisa in Advertisers, Events, Festivals, Fun, Somerset | No Comments

June in Shepton Mallet in Somerset starts with a fragrant bang with it’s National Cheese Awards and Cider competition amongst many other family friendly activities at the Royal Bath & West Show.

New to the show this year is Ladies Day on Thursday 3rd June, when visitors stand a chance of being crowned winner of the best hat competition or best dressed lady and walking away with a mystery prize. Other activities are the terrier races, falcon displays, canoeing, milking cows and feeding chickens amongst many other things!

If you book early and online, you get a 15% discount, plus up to 3 children get free entry!

For prices and opening times and more detailed information click here.

For somewhere to stay, why not try this large detached house in Sampford Brett through Helpful Holidays. It sleeps 13 with 2 doubles, 3 twins and 1 family room. This lovely country house has a neat fenced garden at the front and, at the back, a courtyard (table/chairs, barbecue) filled with flower tubs, leading to a garden with a lawn, and, beyond that, a pony paddock for romping.

Main Photo

It has two front-facing living rooms, one with woodburner, TV, one with open fire, TV/DVD and CD player, both with big sash windows, books and board games; farmhouse-style kitchen (cherry red Rayburn plus electric oven and hob, dishwasher, microwave) with dining table and chairs in the middle and a big dresser; large utility room with tumble drier, washing machine, freezer and shower cubicle. Downstairs twin bedroom and WC next to it.

Stairs from the hall lead up to four more bedrooms – a double plus single with washbasin, a double, a zip-linkable twin with en suite bathroom (suite plus bath-shower), and a twin (low doorway) with washbasin. Smart new bathroom (suite plus bath-shower). A few more stairs up to the attic and a sixth bedroom with 5’ double bed, washbasin, Velux window and exposed ancient roof timbers.

Prices start from £475 that are currently available. Find out more details here.

Helpful Holidays donate £60,000 to charities

Apr 8

Posted by elisa in Advertisers, Charity | No Comments

One of our advertisers, Helpful Holidays have just generously donated over £60,000 to charities based in the West Country. During the VAT holiday, when VAT went down to 15%, Helpful Holidays didn’t take extra profit but instead saved the 2.5% cut in order to give to local charities.

The first four charities to benefit are the Devon Air Ambulance Trust, the Marine Conservation Society, Farms for City Children and the RNLI. ShelterBox, the Cornish based charity famous for its delivery of aid boxes, has already received a donation of £1,000 for its Haiti appeal; and many other regional and national charities will also receive donations throughout the year.

Helpful Holidays General Manager, Moray Bowater, said, “The VAT reduction made such a small difference to the cost of an individual holiday but we book over 17,000 holiday cottage breaks each year so we knew those small amounts would soon add up. It seemed a golden opportunity to raise some cash for the charities being hit hard by the recession.”

Search for Helpful Holidays cottages at our main Holiday Cottages website here.

Linking to HolidayCottages availability calendars from your own site

Mar 4

Posted by evekerswill in Advertisers, Availability | 4 Comments

Linking to HolidayCottages availability calendars from your own site

If you have your own website, you can link directly to your holidaycottages.cc availability page from your site. Visitors to your site will then be able to click through to view availability for your property.

Why build an availability calendar on your web-site?

It is cheaper and easier to link the Availability page from you ‘holidaycottages.cc’ property page.

Each calendar has its own unique web address. Just add this address as a link to your own web-site

Please follow the easy steps below:

Please note: To perform this operation you need to be able to understand and have access to the underlying code of your site. If you are not sure, pleas ask the person who administrates your web-site.

Regarding your Availability page: It is assumed that the Availability has been activated before continuing to the steps below. If not please log in to your ‘holidaycottages.cc’ customer account.

Step 1

– Go to ‘holidaycottages.cc’ home page.

-Type your reference number in the ‘Keyword search’ field.

- Click ‘Search’

Address Bar: http://www.holidaycottages.cc/

Step 2

Your property listing should have appeared on the top of listings page.

– Click to go into it.

Address Bar: http://www.holidaycottages.cc/results.html?keywords=56789

Step 3

You are almost there. At this step you should be in your property page.

– Click ‘Check Availability’ on the top of the page.

Address Bar: http://www.holidaycottages.cc/cottage-2731.html

Step 4

That’s it! You are in your Availability page.

– Use the contents of your browser’s Address Bar on this page.

Address Bar: http://www.holidaycottages.cc/availability.html?id=2731

We’re also working on availability calendars which can be embedded directly into your site. We’ll let you know via the blog and advertiser newsletter when this is up and running,

Holiday Cottages Team

Improvements to HolidayCottages.cc search results

Feb 25

Posted by admin in Advertisers, Cottages Search, Lincolnshire | No Comments

We’ve been making some improvements to the way searching for cottages on holidaycottages.cc works. The keyword searches are now much more targeted. So if you enter “Liskeard” in the keyword search, you get only cottages nearby Liskeard, and nothing else.

Here’s an example of one of the pages with the new search system in operation: List of cottages in Boston, Lincolnshire

We’re always trying to improve these pages and provide as much info about each area as possible – so if anyone has specific areas they’d like us to focus on, do drop us a comment!

Tom K

Tags: boston

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