Eriska, Scottish Island

Minimising Swine flu risks!

Yesterday i had an email from a friend living in Australia, asking what precautions we were taking against the possible pandemic. To be honest I simply responded stating we had other things to worry about so he barraged me with articles on what the Ozzies were doing and offering a few suggestions. Later in the day I met Chay, who I had forgotten was absconding in the morning on some private business away from the hotel. I mentioned that Ken had sent me an email and that I had not thought of the problem as really being here at Eriska but that we ought to consider the issue.

As I was about to leave the island and head south I thought that this would be a wee task for him while I was away. Quick as a flash h told me that he had already taken action-m indeed he had been away in the morning with a borrowed horsebox taking his two pigs to market and indeed believed that this was the only realistic action we could take in the face of the problem. It then made me admire his forethought booking the time off a couple of weeks before the outbreak started so maybe next time if he has so much foresight I will start asking him for horse tips and share advice!!!

Finalist for CIS Independent Hotel of The Year

Some time ago when I questioned a fellow hotelier about how he managedto win so many awards and he then pointed out the obvious! If you do not enter in the first place you cannot even have a chance of winning, its a bit like the harder you work the luckier you become! I took note of this and since then if I am ever asked for information about our achievements always try to answer in a timely fashion and making it sound as positive as possible.

However it is not always as easy as it sounds and therefore when we heard today that we had been shortlisted by Catering in Scotland as one of the Hotels of the Year we were both surprised and delighted. Especially given the list of eminent judges who preside over the event. The next step will be to attend the awards ceremony and keep our fingers crossed.

So for now it is back to the grindstone and to keep working and trying to achieve what we set out to do since we began, whilst awards and nominations are important they are not the be all and end all, happy guests coming year after year are in fact our reason for existing- so back to work!!

Weather wc 26th April

Its hard to believe that we are in the last week of April and only now are we starting to forecast the traditional April Showers.Its amazing how the last week has seen many views from the hotel become obscured due to the leaves coming out and every morning over at the pool it looks a bit like snow as the cherry blossom has been blown off and left in a carpet around the Northern entrance, Anyway whats ahead for the last week of the month apart form the obligatory bank holiday weather!!

Today: It will be a showery day but with some drier and slightly brighter spells between times. More general rain will then be reaching us by dusk.

Monday: The wet weather will be extending  during the night, and the night will see further rain across most of the region at dawn and it will probably continue into Monday although it will later become lighter and more patchy.

Tuesday: After a mainly dry night it will start rather cloudy with a band of showers moving east across Scotland during morning. Drier, brighter weather and fewer showers following for afternoon.

Wednesday: it will be mainly dry and fairly bright with light winds

Thursday : it will be more unsettled with a risk of some showery rain. Light easterly winds.

Friday: Initially we are expecting unsettled conditions with locally heavy outbreaks of rain, although by the Bank Holiday weekend this rain is likely to have become confined to the higher hills

Saturday:Drier, brighter conditions spread across Argyll bringing a generally better weekend of weather, not exactly what we would expect of a Bank Holiday Forecast!

 

Mild Marathon Jealousy!

Every autumn I consider entering the London Marathon, firstly becuase I think it would be a great day out and secondly its something that I think I could do but am not really sure whether i really could do it. anyway although i have entered once and failed to make the ballot, I have always on every otehr oaccsion eitehr manufatcured the ability to miss the deadline or come up with a truly justifiable reason why i could not take part that particular year. Every year I meet someone who has achieved the distance or is about to and always admire their dedication and confidence in partaking.

Norammly the pride of Britain AGM coincides with the Sunday of the Marathon and apart from cursing the traffic disruption I watch the television news to imagine that it could have been me or maybe one day will be, although I am more liklely to be keeping the pantomime horse company or the man in the diving suit!! Anyway this year I will definitely be monitoring the screens as there are two runners we feel have a direct link to Eriska and botha re running for really great causes. 

The first, Doreen Henderson, is a member of our leisure club and is running for Coeliac UK which is the only charity in the UK, which supports those with coeliac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis. We have not seen much of Doreen over the last month as she pounds the pavements but I am sure she will deliver a good time and complete the course.

The second, Ailsa Paterson, is a direct decendent of the Clark Hutchison Family who owned Eriska at the turn of the century and really were the family who have the longest history with the house and island, she is running for Alzheimer Scotland which provides a range of services around Scotland including specialist day care, help in the home, befriending, carer support, counselling and a confidential 24-hour Helpline. According to Ailsa she just decided one day that she would sign uop and help raise funds for the charity and thought of no better way than both setting herself a target and getting out there and doing it.

Anyway we will be watching out for both fundraisers tomorrow and cheering them on and wish them both well. Hopefully the promise of ideal weather conditions, cool calm and dry will come true and the hot summer conditions will only be at Eriska. So another year goes by without an entry but at least we can be there in mind this year if not in body!

Budget effects?

As I sit here in my office looking out across the golf course I can't help first considering the impact of the Chancellors statement on Eriska and secondly draw an analogy with our current situation. Firstly were I to produce a forecast for the bank and 6 months later have to revise it by a multiple of 4 I would never survive even if I tried to blame it on outside global factors. (And so we will be able to test next year at the General election). Whilst I think almost everybody in the country- apart from the Treasury- seemed to know how bad it was and indeed on a daily basis witness the economic changes we all anticipate that it will get better and hope that this will come sooner rather than later.

Personally I think the slow down will be even steeper but I do then accept that the growth could be just as rapid, using simple terms the lower you go the steeper thecurve can be to get you back to where you have come from - so realistically if there is potential capacity then this can be filled to help growth but maybe the chancellor forgot that you also need demand to fuel this need for supply- anyway lets hope those figures are right.

When drawing similaritiesies to Eriska, we as hoteliers are notoriously bad at either telling everybody how busy we are, so as not to seem prone to panic and also giving potential business the impression that we are as popular as our neighbours- simply put you would not want to eat in an empty restaurant if the next door one is busy or we also tend to be gloom merchants as well panicing at the first sight of a problem and trying to preempt changes in the market. In this respect I can sympathies with the Chancellor as he is trying to paint a picture of the potential of a sunny day tomorrow.

As I look out across the final green of the golf course Spring is certainly here the trees are now covered in a green haze, the birds are in full song so whilst we may be a bit quieter than last year everything is in position for a good year in terms of the physical side of Eriska and all we simply require is visitors to come and enjoty it. Being only a small family business we can therefore insure that we can maintain the standards of service and indeed could argue that with slighly less business we can increase these levels on those achieved before.

However we have also got to be careful not to leave ourselves open to the fragile market. We have in the last few days heard of two accounts going into administration and  whilst we fortunately were not exposed to heavily they will still impact on our plans but it is more that fact that both businesses are likely to reemerge from the experience in another guise simply casting off many small debts like ours and leaving a greater trail of devastation that riles me. Anyway the sun is now beating down despite the weather forecast of rain in the West Highlands so lets hope the budget predictions buck the experts views too!  

Pride of Britain annual Lunch- Hotel of the Year

When we first joined Pride of Britain Hotels back in the 90's we were very much a seasonal hotel closing in October and notreopening until Easter. Then Pride of Britain held a conference in the autumn whichreally summed up the last year andwas a chance to reflect on the year gone by and the next time we met was in April at the AGM which was held in London and marked the start of the next season for us. It was a chanceto reacquaint ourselves with other members and hear of plans for the year ahead.

Times have now really changed we are open all year round and the two meetings of Pride of Britain have alsotaken on new shapes. The conference represents a time that all the members are together and strategic decisions and changes can be made with as much discussion as is required and theAGM then becomes theannual report on the last years business and less about plans for the future. Therefore this year fro the first time we removed the Sales and Reservation element from the April meetingand held a seminar earlier in the year beforeeveryone started to get busy and yesterday was our official AGM with all the official paperwork to be completed.

It also provided us with the opportunity to announce the Hotel of the yearand as my last official engagement as Chairman, it was with great pleasure that I was able to award  this mantle to my fathers favourite London Hotel, in fact he used to tell people it was his residence when in town,- The Goring. We heard an excellent speech from Steven Norris and all left in a certainly more positive manner than i had initially expected. Whenever hoteliers are together it is either a chance for m,embers to boast on how busy they are or moan about how quiet they are. Normally both are slight exaggerations but on this occasion everybody seemed to be far more realistic, all were not as busy as last year and were hopeful that we had turned the corner on the current situation, we will now leave it up to the Chancellor to depress and shatter the illusions in tomorrows budget!!  

weather w/c 19th April

On Friday night i received a call firstly to check that i had remembered to water all the plants outside, logical having had a wonderful afternoon of sunshine, and then to warn me to cover any exposed tender plants from Frost overnight. To be honest i had a little chuckle and chose to ignore the suggestion. I did so at my peril as Friday night saw not a cloud in the sky and the temperature did plumet to close to freezing but luckily we were kept just out of trouble by the warm sea breeze., Chay however reported that his windscreen needed scraping in the morning due to frost!!

What makes this so remarkable is the fact the we have now had a week of glorious afternoons and it may be set to continue for a few days at least, but will it last?

Well today any thicker cloud dwelling overnight should tend to clear during the morning with bright and sunny spells becoming widespread. Warm in the sunshine with winds remaining light. 

Monday: Although more cloudy  it will also be a brighter day

Tuesday Although it will start brightt patchy rain possiblele pushing in later on

Wednesday: Dry and bright again but later rain and  strengthening winds will push in from the west.

Thursday: Unsettled conditions with cloud and rain are expected to spread 

Friday:. This unsettled weatheris then expected to continue in all parts with further showers and occasionally some longer spells of rain.

Saturday: Although drier than yesterday it will still be showery and a bit cooler but by the end of the day it will become somewhat more settled and drier.

 

Spring Shattered - First cuckoo heard!

Its was only yesterday that one of the guests was commentiong on the silence and peace and quiet of Eriska nd I happened to mention- under my breath- that that would only last as long as the Cuckoos where in hiding. Regrettably I was a wee bit too right as this morning the day was shattered by the first cuckoo of the year.

As always these seem to come to a tree near my bedroom and despite my best efforts to spot them the green leaves always seem to hide them from me and like following the end of the rainbow as I try to find the gold no sooner to I mount an attach on a certain tree than I discover it is empty and the sound begins to come form another direction. Anyway I suppose it si the first real sign that summer is just around the cornerr and given that the views from the house are becoming constricted by the leaves on the trees maybe the persistent cuckoo calls will be deadened by the foliage!

One hopes!!

Eriska soars to Number 6

This week I was sent a copy of a magazine published in the middle east. It ranks Eriska as one of the top ten private islands in the world and the only island in the UK to be listed. The article is about the world's best 'exclusive island paradises' and is in the current Middle East edition of Harpers Bazaar. 

It is not often we are listed in such mighty publications but I was especially interested to know that the other nine contenders included Necker Island in the BVI, Royal Plantation in the Bahamas, Ile des deux Cocos on Mauritius and Medjumbe in Mozambique. Eriska was the only UK suggestion.

 Given the great weatehr this week and the forecast foir it to continue maybe we should be starting to market ourselves as a closer to home escape, its just nice to be included amongst other properties that we have always dreamt about visiting. Anyway now having entered the top ten we shall set our target at making the top 5!

No Sea Eagle- Yet

Having raised expectations preparing you all for a possible Sea Eagle Nest on Eriska my hopes were first dashed by a local ornithologist who was visiting yesterday for the annual Heron count. The good news was that there has been an increase by one to the number of nesting herons on Eriska but then he denied the possibility of the Sea eagle setting up nest so close to the Heronry. This was confimrfed last night by the spotting guests sending the image which they had enhanced om their computer to show the nest and a possible chick, if you are the kind of believer in the the Loch Ness Monster!

 To be fair they were the first to admit the error and whilst this can be easily done given the small camera screen the good news was that not only was their other shot of a bird in flight definitely a Sea Eagle, now confirmed but it is also highly likely that it is one of a pair now in Loch Creran.

The other great news is that there is a high chance that we may somewhere on the island eventually attract another nesting pair as the trees and habitat seem ideal for them combined with the Sanctuary aspect of the island. In addition whilst the nest may have been misdiagnosed they did manage to get two other great shots first of a Willow Warbler

and then one of a Dunnock. Neither of which has our resident photographer been able to get so close to.