IAN PEARSON had his Damascus road moment on the Central Line platform of Mile End station in East London. The first train to arrive was so packed he could not squeeze on. When he still could not get on by the sixth, he gave up and went home, vowing never again to buy a season ticket.
He was already in the process of changing his lifestyle, having left the law firm Nabarro Nathanson in 1999 after 11 years, and was working part time as a professional support lawyer at Linklaters and consulting as an employment lawyer. At weekends he and his partner, Lynne Abbott, would go to the country to indulge their hobby of walking. But they both had a wish to get out of London and run a guesthouse, so the weekend activity would start with a stop at an estate agent for details of likely properties.
Mr Pearson, 42, says: “We had been using B&B places for so long on our walking weekends that we were becoming expert on evaluating the service on offer. We got ideas of what to do, and what not to do, and decided that we could do it better.”
Once the decision had been taken to find a country B&B and turn their hobby into a business, they bought a map of England and spread it on the table. Ms Abbott, 44, who had worked for Gravesham council as a housing strategy officer for nine years, says: “We wanted hills and the place had to be within three hours of the major conurbations. We wanted a six-bedroom B&B business and found it the Forest of Dean. It fell through and three weeks later the foot-and-mouth outbreak began” One weekend, on a trip back from visiting friends in Bodmin, they chanced to stop at Nether Stowey on the eastern flank of the Quantocks. The village was where Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived for three years (the poet’s house is a National Trust museum). Those years were his most productive: walking in the Quantocks with his neighbours, Dorothy and William Wordsworth, was inspirational (and that was before he became addicted to opium) and there he composed The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, among other poems.
The Pearsons stayed in the Rose & Crown inn. They liked the pretty and unpretentious Somerset village with the stream running down the main street from the Quantocks, just a few minutes’ walk up the lane, designated Britain’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) 50 years ago. The next post brought details of a property for sale in Nether Stowey, the Old Cider House. But it wasn’t a B&B, just a large, elegant, Edwardian, if rather plain, private house. Mr Pearson recalls: “As soon as we saw it, we decided to buy, because it had potential.” The price of £315,000 included three cottages and a flat. For the first two months of 2002 the couple enjoyed not being in London (they have kept their East Ham flats to lease to Newham council). They explored the surrounding AONB, checking out pubs and walks because the plan was to offer walking holidays once the private house had been converted for guest use and planning permission obtained for change of use.
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Ms Abbott, having worked in housing in her other life, knew how important it was to work with the authorities and not against them. “The planners were concerned about parking,” she says, “so we got the builders, who started in October, to pull down some outbuildings to provide places inside the courtyard through the wooden gates at the side of the house. There was enough space for five letting rooms, so we had en-suite facilities installed in each of them. We built our accommodation on the top floor” As is often the case with builders, the completion date kept being pushed back. There were frantic months of working in London during the week and dashing to Somerset to spend weekends on painting and other jobs, and in March 2003 they were able to hold their opening party. “I was still screwing tables and chairs together in the afternoon for the party that evening,” Mr Pearson remembers. “We invited all the people involved in the project — the builders, the planners, the local tourist officers . . . As for neighbours, we had written to all of them before opening for business to explain what we hoped to do and offered to meet them in the Rose & Crown to discuss any concerns. Only one turned up and we were happy to reassure him, one of our tenants, that there would be parking for him in the courtyard.”
The first paying guest was an inspector from the English Tourism Council (now Visit Britain). He must have liked what he saw because the Old Cider House was awarded four diamonds. “All the other guests staying with us at that time, were family and friends — but we didn’t tell him that,” Mr Pearson confesses. Since the opening, the Pearsons have adapted to the demands of the market and now have a dog-friendly policy because there is a shortage of B&Bs willing to take pets. Ozy, their black labrador, is keen to greet every guest as they arrive The couple are passionate about offering good food and good service. Mr Pearson went on a micro-brewing course and now supplies three local pubs with his own Nether Ending Bitter. He plans to offer weekend courses this autumn for guests to learn the art of alchemy, turning hops and malt and yeast into a good brew. “I also look forward to experimenting a bit,” he says with a smack of the lips. “I quite fancy getting local whortleberries (wild bilberries) from the Quantocks and making a wheat beer.” He is also involved with promoting “agri-tourism” and helping to develop the idea of “food paths”. He explains: “Visitors to Somerset come and stroke the pig and buy the sausages, then we cook their breakfast banger. We have just started a Somerset taster menu at the Old Cider House along the lines of tapas — little tastes of all sorts of locally sourced products — cheese, venison, game, berries, fruits and vegetables. We want people to slow down, switch off their mobiles and taste some good food.”
And how do the Pearsons follow their own advice? “Oh,” he says, “we go on holiday regularly — six weeks a year if possible, often walking holidays on the Continent.
The Old Cider House, Nether Stowey, Somerset 01278-732228, www.theoldciderhouse.co.uk