Cobble House blog » At Cobble House

Goodbye to 2011 and Thank you!

Ingrid — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 23:45:33 +0000

In a little over two weeks we will say goodbye to 2011 and hello to 2012. It seems time goes faster and faster and the years just fly by. Does it have something to do with age do you think?

We had the great pleasure of hosting wonderful guests again at our Cobble Hill Bed & Breakfast this past year from many parts of the world including most parts of Canada, a number of US states, Australia and New Zealand, Singapore, The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, Scotland and England and South Africa. Being a Bed & Breakfast innkeeper is such an interesting job as you hear guests talk about their travels and experiences and then get the opportunity to share with them the great things to see and do in your part of the world. It is a real “feel good” profession to be in and after 18 years in the business I still love that aspect of it the most.

Highlights this year included the long awaited opening of the Kinsol Trestle, a heritage attaction that completes another stretch of the Cowichan Valley trail portion of the Trans Canada Trail. The new Unsworth Vineyard opened up just down the road from our Bed & Breakfast and will be joined by one of our finest restaurants, Amuse Bistro, this winter. At the civic elections in November, the proposed Eco Recycling Depot planned by the CVRD just a kilometer down our road was voted down 2 to 1 which is a big relief as we had major concerns in seeing that built in this particular location.

We would like to thank all the guests who stayed with us in 2011. It was our pleasure to host you during your vacation, your get-away, your family or friend’s weddings, your visits to family or friends. We hope you enjoyed your stay with us, and especially thank those of you who took the time to write us a review. Have a wonderful Christmas, a safe and happy holiday, and we hope to see you with us again in the future. 2012 here we come!

A thank you to our guests

Ingrid — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 02:09:21 +0000

As another year draws to a close, I like to reflect on the guests that stayed with us this year. We met wonderful folks from all parts of BC, and from most Canadian provinces; from all the way down the US west coast and from several eastern states and from Florida. Travelers arrived from the UK, from Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand and Korea. It’s wonderful to share the Cowichan Valley and Vancouver Island with these visitors and help to make their visit as interesting and comfortable as possible. We had guests for weddings, reunions, birthday parties, the wineries or just to explore the Island or visit friends or family in the area.

It’s also a pleasure every year to see some of our “regular” guests. Some come for specific events in the area, such as the Brentwood College Regatta at the end of April, or the Shawnigan Regatta two weeks later, some come to visit their children who are attending any one of four private boarding schools in the area, and some come just to relax and rejuvenate, or because they love visiting the Island. It’s very rewarding to see them return to Cobble House, and to catch up on how things have been going in their lives.

Because some of our guests have taken the time to share their experience of staying at Cobble House on TripAdvisor, Cobble House B&B was given a certificate of excellence by TripAdvisor, based on a TripAdvisor rating of 5 as given to us by our guests. We thank all of you who have taken the time to write a review, and appreciate it so very much. We strive to offer the best Bed & Breakfast experience that we can, and after 17 years in business here in Cobble Hill we’re still learning new things every year to help make your stay with us the very best that it can be.

We hope to see you back with us, and would like to wish all of you a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah, a happy holiday season, and health and happiness in 2011!

A different kind of wildlife at Cobble House

Ingrid — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:29:45 +0000

One of the pleasures of having a deck full of flowers in the summer time is the presence of the pacific tree frog. It doesn’t take long once we put our planters out in late May/early June for these regular visitors to show up in our pots. These tiny frogs, only about 5 cm long, hide underneath the leaves in the planters, and usually you don’t notice them until they move or jump out if you’re watering the plants.

: hiding in the planters on our deck

The pacific tree frog is found throughout the pacific region on North America’s west coast, so also on Vancouver Island. They are quite common, although we find we don’t see as many on our deck as we used to. They range in color from greyish to brown and several shades of green, including bright green, (we’ve even seen some touches of a lavender type shade), and will change in color, possibly in response to changes in temperature and humidity. Occasionally you’ll see them crawling up the side of the house, as they have sticky pads on their toes for gripping. They have a noticeable astripe from their nostril, across the eye and shoulder.

The pacific tree frog has a very loud and distinct sound, one that is often used in the movies or even in cartoons. When they mate in the spring in shallow wetlands, the chorus of many tree frogs in the early evening is an incredible sound. You can’t miss it! Listen!

They eat insects so there is lots of food available to them, and we enjoy seeing them at Cobble House B&B throughout the summer, and sharing a bit of information about them with our guests.

Welcome to the Cobble House Blog

Ingrid — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:33:58 +0000

A new deer family, June 11, 2010

This was a scene I managed to capture a few days ago on our acreage at Cobble House Bed & Breakfast in the Cowichan Valley. Fortunately and unfortunately at the same time, deer are a regular sight around our house.

The fortunate part is that we very much do enjoy seeing the wildlife around our place. It’s still a pretty special feeling seeing wildlife on your own property. We come from the Netherlands originally and it’s pretty mind boggling that this kind of space and wilderness directly around your home is possible. Since I took this photo a few days ago, I’ve seen another mother with one fawn and the fawns have been playing and running around on the back lawn several times, in between nursing with their moms. It’s hard to resist baby animals!

The unfortunate part is that the deer can decimate your garden. We used to have a couple of beloved dogs who definitely helped keep the deer at a distance. Since they’ve been gone, the deer are coming closer to the house, even up the front steps or on the deck in the back! We can’t be watching for them all the time with a busy B&B to run among other things, so we’ve been forced to protect our deck with portable fences that we can roll in and out, and put chicken wire around some of the summer plants in front.

The rest of the garden suffers from deer browsing, so shrubs tend to be bare on the bottom up to a certain level. I enjoyed some lovely irises for a few days until one of the deer found them! At least I enjoyed them for a few days, which is better than the daylilies we never see once the bud has formed! Last year I talked to a neighbour down the road and she said she hardly ever sees deer around her property. I guess they must all be at Cobble House!

Come by and check us out again soon. We’re still tweeking the format and the bells & whistles on this blog, but we hope to show you around the area and the B&B in the future.