Chill baby

The new cellar cooler is running and already the cellar is down from 17C to 15C. That's a big improvement and is probably due to better insulation than the second fan unit. Both are cooling the air to 12C and dripping water enthusiastically all over the place as air conditioners tend to do.

What else today? Well, not a lot - there were no guests last night and none as yet tonight. There are a few bookings for the weekend but in general it's been a wretchedly slow season here and everywhere else.

Some Belgian bikers did turn up and ordered eight pints of real ale which flustered our barmaid slightly as we serve it from the cellar and usually sell no more than four or five pints in a day. Suddenly being asked for eight at once while welcome causes a fair amount of people scampering around clutching large numbers of pint glasses.

Work continues - Some plywood sheeting was fitted to the new kitchen floor today and some skirting and door facings were attached. D*** is coming up in a couple of weeks to see progress.

For the upgrading of the unused rooms we are seriously considering carrying out some of the joinery, plasterboarding and decoration work ourselves. We're fairly sure that we could do it to a better standard than the current workers and have a vested interest in finishing on time and to budget. D**** is not completely negative about this but has highlighted the fact that, particulary with Room 1 the work is quite complicated and may be too difficult for us to do ourselves.