Moving to Northumberland from Suffolk on 1st April 1991 was the start of an amazing adventure. Kate was just 9 months old, now she’s the same age I was on the day I arrived and has two children of her own.
How do I fit 30 years into a few paragraphs? Looking back over the 3 decades it’s easy to count the improvements made to the building: we have replaced all the roofs, put in 8 new external doors, 26 new windows, 8 showers, 2 central heating boilers and 3 logburners. We added a dining room, ensuite bedrooms, turned the annex dormitory into a chalet and with an eye to the environmental impact we’ve installed solar hot water, PV panels and electric vehicle charging posts.
But while the building improvements have been important my memories are really about the people and animals who have shared the place. Baby Katie was joined 3 years later by twins Tessa and Duncan and Ninebanks has been a family home as well as a hostel. Over the years we’ve had dogs and cats, chinchillas, chickens and ducks (we didn’t plan on getting ducks but Kate found ducklings on her 9th birthday so they had to stay). We’ve had pet lambs, goats and pigs, fortunately not all at the same time, and briefly fostered 2 baby alpacas before they emigrated to Portugal. Bottle feeding alpacas was always interesting as they spat the last mouthful of milk over the child holding the bottle, a child who was the same height as the alpaca!
We have welcomed thousands of guests, some for just one night, others have come back time and time again and some have become great friends. It’s lovely when we recognise the names on the booking emails or a friendly voice on the phone and look forward to catching up with people. Ninebanks is such a special place, I reckon there have been around 60,000 overnight stays since I moved here, we’ve hosted birthday parties, anniversaries and celebrations of every description. People have got engaged while staying here, spent time with family and friends, worked from here: mapping the geological landscape, guiding conservation volunteers or working from “home”. We’ve survived the Foot and Mouth epidemic in 2001 (just), and Covid 19 Pandemic (hopefully). It hasn’t always been an easy life but looking back over the last 30 years I feel lucky to have been able to call this my home.
No big party this year but I am now so looking forward to welcoming guests back again after Easter and meeting up with old friends and new. Next year Orchard House will have been a hostel for 75 years and that is definitely cause for another celebration
