Can escape be called work?

I grew up in this very special part of North Norfolk,  I played in the fields around Hunworth village, had picnics in the bluebell woods, paddled in the streams, learnt to sail on the coast  and  to drive a car on the farm tracks.  An unsophisticated childhood and rural idyll I will always be grateful for.  Then I ran to the big smoke of London and now almost 20 years later I have run even faster back, now plus husband and two small boys.   However raising my own children is not always the peaceful rural idyll I had imagined, there is mud and cold and tantrums and laundry piled high.  After over 10 years working in the travel industry followed by 3 years as a housewife the need to work, to contribute to society and create something with a sense of order has moved from a whim to a driving force.   So the idea of Stody Holiday Cottages was born, to set up and run boltholes in this exceptionally beautiful and unspoilt corner of Norfolk.   Maybe the bolthole is a little bit for me to?!

Detail, detail and more attention to detail is what the travel industry  has drummed into my head. That is the easy part, the detail I believe is something that I can do (spelling aside!), the vision to create the sort of place I would want to go and stay in is I admit, the difficult bit.     The cottages should be smart, yes, clean and modern like a hotel, maybe, a home from home without the clutter and chores, yes but how will this be cozy and welcoming and unique?   So clean and fresh palates, an open fire, pretty fabrics, not chintzy sure but definitely friendly.   Lots of light, the feeling of the outside coming in, but not cold in the winter.   These things are tricky.   I will do my best and see what people say, see what people like.   As long as the bed is deeply comfortable, the bathroom and kitchen clean and bright, the water hot, the garden full of tidy flower, I will be on the right track, but I hope for so much more, I hope for the place that I would want to go and  most of all  go back to.

So I leave the children with my husband on a Saturday morning, to walk the 1 mile through the village to 'work'.   I clean and scrub and polish, fluff and arrange and potter, this work is my haven, a few hours of peace at the start of the weekend.   No one claiming my attention except the quiet ebb of the cottage as it turns itself around and proudly opens its door for new guests who I hope will find the tranquility and recharge that they seek.   However as I walk away it is with a spring in my step that despite the tantrums and traumas of little boys, we live in Norfolk and today it is ours to seek.