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We hope you enjoy visiting North Devon as much as we enjoy living here. Much of what makes this place special is the history and unspoilt beauty of its natural landscape, we are trying to look after it for ever and keep it beautiful by protecting the nature, conserving energy and water and minimising waste by recycling and composting as much as possible. We ask guests at to help with this as much as possible.
We are committed to sustaining our natural surroundings by reducing our environmental impact and promoting good practices through: training employees within their working practices, ensuring reduced impact in all areas; educating guests in the sound understanding of environmental impact and reduction; complying with relevant environmental legislation and implementing systems and procedures to assure compliance; monitoring our environmental action plan at the quarterly Health & Safety meetings; being consistently aware of areas for improvement and improving e.g. asking people not to leave things on standby
Key areas for continuous improvement: We aim to reduce our energy consumption by increased energy efficiency, reduce our water consumption by improving water usage and waste, create less waste by the use of waste reduction and recycling, continue with our tree planting and land management plan to offset your vacation in Devon and when required always replacing electric products with AAA rated appliances
Work so far: We have recycling procedures in place and information in all cottages. We have changed to environmentally friendly cleaning products. 95% of light bulbs in the cottages have been changed to low energy. We have instigated thermostats on the heating systems and have instigated floor and loft insulation. We have replaced existing boilers with high efficient on demand LPG Combi boilers. We have gained GOLD for Green Tourism Awards.
We have Bio Mass Heating in the office with locally sourced wood. We have weekly bench marking of electricity and water usage. We have introduced eco friendly cleaning supplies. We purchase only FSC wood products. We use nouvelle recycled toilet paper and eco office supplies. We have a turn off policy and have dual flush toilets/Hippo bags. We have aerators on all taps to reduce water. We use native only trees in offsetting planting. We use a green electric supplier and have water butts to collect rain water for hanging baskets.
We have hosted shared servers for email and CRM and sensored led office lighting. We have high levels of draught insulation and high levels of insulation. We use call conferencing to prevent unnecessary car journeys. We use an all in one networked printer solution and we use double sided printing using recycled paper for printing as well as recycling printer cartridges. We have switched from fax to email service to save paper. We recycle glass, metal and plastic. We use fair trade tea and coffee products. We have regular eco reviews with our eco supplier agenda. We use Bio Diesel/low emission/economical vehicles. We compost (tea bags, green waste, fruit etc), use solar powered fairy lights and energy saving light bulbs in outside lights.
The Cottages were crowned Self Catering and Serviced Apartment of the Year at the 2010 Devon Tourism Awards.
Aside from winning their category in the Devon Tourism Awards, they also have 5 gold stars from Visit Britain and have also been awarded Gold from Green Tourism for their commitment to the environment, with the installation of a wind turbine, PV panels and a successful recycling policy.
My husband and I spent two days at the cottages; walking around the grounds, taking in the scenic landscape. We also tried out local treats of the 'Chi mind body and spirit' which provided a relaxing massage and then tried the local food at 'The 'Golden Lion' pub and 'Weirmarsh' restaurant, both providing lovely meals and service.
Whilst walking around at sunset we were impressed to view a buzzard flying free above the meadow fields. Feeding the trout was brilliant fun and I would suggest this vacation to anyone interested in fishing. We invite every traveler who books a vacation via us to send in a review. Because we don't run the vacations they're completely independent and unedited... remember to read between the lines though, as two people on the same vacation can have different views!
