After the Ball is Over

How does the song go - 'the parties over, time to call it a day'..?? Well our wedding celebrations are well and truly over, following a quite wonderful wedding and a spectacular honeymoon at the Manoir de la Riviere in Normandy we are now back into the full swing of Easter in a busy upmarket seaside town - not the bucket and spade brigade and kiss me quick hats for Salcombe.... Oh no, much more the Quba coats, G & T, Champagne and Scallops type!!

I'm really pleased to say that despite pretty poor weather the town has had a great influx of visitors, the estuary is full of yachts big and small, voices in the bar below me are vying with each other to be heard and the sound of laughter and glasses chinking are filling the pub. Our newly re-furbished upstairs restaurant is going down a storm, despite last nights teething problems as we grappled with stepping up to the plate of the Easter holiday after a long sleepy ('ish) winter.

Those of you who have read this blog since I started writing for the Good Pub Guide or have tapped into my other blog - A pub landlady's life - will know that I am relatively new to this game of being a licensee. Even now after almost 18 months I still have days when I am filled with self doubt as to whether I'll ever get the hang of this job........ the hours, the inevitable staffing issues that seem to crop up at least once a week etc and all the other associated issues of being a landlady.

But on the whole I really do love it - and in that short space of time I've gone from a lifetime in Local Government to running with my Husband (lol) an exceptionally successful and busy seasonal pub, owning a Cafe that has a history in Salcombe of being 'the place to go' for breakfast and now, we have been asked to take on the tenancy of another pub that St Austell are buying and is less than 20 minutes away from the Victoria Inn.

It's the White Hart Hotel in Modbury - Modbury being a small town (smaller than Salcombe), one very main road with great quirky shops, lovely galleries, a hat shop and great small individual shops with character. Lots and lots of cars drive through to get to Plymouth and like us until the other week very rarely seem to stop unless it's for a reason. Modbury also has a huge history stretching back hundreds of years. The pub itself It has also had a quite chequered history over the last couple of years, but we believe (as does St Austell) that we can use the magic we poured into the Victoria Inn into the White Hart Hotel.

Its a big pub, at the moment quite cold and unwelcoming - literally actually, as the gas and electric are not on, for reasons which I won't elaborate(!), a wine bar feel with lots of leather sofa's, cold granite floor, no curtains and a bar that's so high I would have difficulty seeing over! So, as well as organising our wedding we've been working away in the background in the last couple of weeks putting adverts in place in the local press, liaising with the brewery on terms and conditions for this our second tenancy and generally veering between blind panic, terror and excitement - all in equal measure.

Therefore, good blog readers of the Good Pub Guide you can be sure of great copy as I grapple with what running 2 pubs and a cafe does to my sanity and equilibrium........... till then I hope you enjoy a good Easter break and for those of us in the trade, lets hope it's a profitable start to the Summer months!!