LET’S DO OUR BIT

Our home and self catering holiday cottages are a bit old, so not as eco-friendly and sustainable as we would like like – though we’re sure big thick walls will help!  Every little bit helps though, and as we start out on owning our own little holiday business we want to do as much as we can for the environment – and we will need your help too.  We are by no means perfect but we will be  trying our very best to reduce our environmental impact by following the  principle of REDUCE – REUSE – RECYCLE, wherever possible.

At Cliff House Holiday Cottages we have invested in and adopted a number of practices to help make our business more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

Click on each of the headings below to find out more…

SAVE ENERGY

As  five cottages, some of which are part of a listed Grade II building, with a swimming pool we have some challenges about fuel consumption and how to minimise use without affecting our listed building status or switching the pool off ????

  • In late 2022 we installed solar panels over the swimming pool and added commercial batteries to save and store energy.  Even when it is cloudy we can be taking electricity off the grid at off peak times to charge our batteries.
  • In 2023 we installed a second hand conditioning unit for our swimming pool, not only avoiding something that was perfectly serviceable going in to land fill, it meant we were more up to date and using a more fuel efficient system to warm the water and the air for our pool.  Our old equipment was taken to our local council recycling centre.
  • In 2023 we installed an electric heater for the pool water, this means when it is sunny and we are over producing electricity we can switch this on instead of using the gas powered conditioning unit.  So you could be swimming in sunshine!
  • In dark areas around our 2 acres, we have installed either solar powered LED lights to show the way or light sensors that only come on when it is dark.
  • In our cottages when bulbs need replacing we replace with energy efficient low energy bulbs, and we are always mindful of the efficiency rating of any new appliances that we buy.
  • In our larger cottages we have open log fires, our wood is seasoned so that it burns efficiently and is sourced locally and supplied by someone in the village.  On occasion it may even be wood from our own trees!

eco friendly sustainable sustainability solar panels swimming pool

SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL

  • We provide 2 large bike storage lockers, which can be booked when booking your cottage.  Dalby Forest is just on our door step and is a fantastic place for on and off road cycling.
  • In 2023 we installed 4 electric vehicle charging points for our guests to use.
  • When it came time to get rid of our old and very reliable car, we traded it in for an electric car, which is now our main car for doing the shopping, doing school runs and visiting the local area.

 

ev charging point electric vehicle charging point eco friendly sustainable sustainability

SUPPORT LOCAL

We love supporting local business (as one ourselves), we recognise our role in bringing visitors to the area and supporting an all year round local tourist economy and the jobs that that brings.

  • Where ever possible, we use local trades people, in fact our roofer, joiner and carpenter all live in our village.  Everyone else, lives within about 6 miles of us.
  • We encourage our guests to visit local attractions, whether that’s in our blog posts or our “10 things to do in North Yorkshire” downloadable guide.
  • Through our Facebook page we are always promoting local business, attractions and things to do, have a look for yourself!
  • We have a small honesty shop above our pool and stock crafts made local villagers, whether that is hand made soaps, greetings cards or cermanics.

 

honesty shop annwyn botanticals matildabelle ceramics ceramics skin care textile artist sarah coates shop crafts crafting artisanal artisan

PROTECT NATURE

  • Throughout our cottages we use environmentally friendly and chlorine free cleaning products, specifically Minimal, which we buy in bulk and use re-fillable bottles – look out for our glass pumpy washing up liquid dispensers!  Occasionally we may use Eco-over as we run down our stocks, but Minimal is very much our product of choice.
  • Eco friendly loo roll can be a bit of a challenge.  We use Cheeky Panda, which is made from sustainably sourced bamboo and put in to compressed rolls, so in theory more can be shipped in the same space.  Every loo in our cottages is provided with 2 rolls to get guests going.
  • After our supplier stopped stocking the soaps we like to provide guests,  we did a lot of research to find our new complimentary soaps.  These are made from 100% vegetable oil, packaged in “stone paper” which uses less resource than paper and the packaging is printed using sustainable soya ink.
  • In our gardens we are haven for nature, from seeing willow tits (once we saw a sea eagle), buzzards, the occasional deer and even adders we do a lot to make what we do fit with nature.
    • Meadow, we have given over about a quarter of our gardens over to meadow, which is cut back in the late summer.  This is to encourage the growth of wildflowers and provide a valuable habitat (we find small frogletts when we cut back the grass).  We also ensure that we cut from the middle out, ensuring that what is hiding in the grass as an opportunity to move on to another part of the gardem
    • Throughout our garden you will find bug houses, piles of old pot and sticks and leave mould to make a safe place for bugs to hide in.
    • Bird feeders, we ensure that our bird feeders are stocked all year, not only does this attract something nice to look at it in to our gardens, it also means during lean period we are a reliable source of food.
    • We have over 10 nest boxes for various breeds of birds dotted throughout the gardens and we clean them out regularly
    • In our woodland we have felled some trees for safety reasons, to create light wells in the woods and to cut back around our pond to stop leaves falling in the pond and decomposing (and in turn silting it up)

 

blue tit great tit long tailed tit willow tit great yorkshire forest dalby forest chafer wood self catering

blue tit great tit long tailed tit willow tit great yorkshire forest dalby forest chafer wood self catering bird bird feeder sustainable sustainability

SAVE WATER

  • Did you know that at Cliff House we can store over 1200 litres of rain water collected from our gutters that we then reuse in our gardens during dry spells, and thats before we start to draw water from our ponds!
  • In our cottages we have aerators fitted to taps and water savers in our cisterns

LOCAL COMMUNITY

Its always a challenge to upsticks and meet new people, that why we jumped in with both feet in to our fantastic local community

  • Jacqueline is a member of the village hall committee which cares for the the upkeep of our local village hall (which was once the village school).  The village hall committee organises everything from duck races, community breakfasts to yoga hosted by drag queens!
  • Alastair is a parish councillor and a trust appointed governor at the local secondary school.  He is also involved with North Yorkshire Council and their consultations around tourism strategy.

REDUCE WASTE

  • We encourage all of guests to use our own little recycling centre where we collect card, tins, plastic and glass.  Most weeks, thanks to efforts of our guests, we put out more for recycling than we do for our regular bins
  • We always seek out the least impactful packaging and actively steer away from anything that is wrapped in plastic, that why we love our local butcher, everything cut to size and wrapped in paper.

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