The Newcastle Journal - Wednesday August 15 2001

Family's hardest test in 25 years

How have rural tourism businesses coped amid the disabling effect of foot-and-mouth disease? Brian Nicholls spotlights two - a hotel and an outdoor catering organisation -that have had to live on ingenuity in recent months.

It has been a funny old year so far for Anne Park. As owner of the Thnkerville Arms Hotel in Wooler - "the Gateway to the Cheviots" -and now about to celebrate 25 years of trading in a family concern, Anne has recently gone through a five-day power cut, followed soon after by cancellations brought by the foot-and-mouth outbreak - but then she got to meet a Government minister, once, and the Queen, twice, who inquired kindly abut the state of her business.

Anne's double encounter with the Queen came last month during the royal visit to Northumberland. She was one of a small group of hospitality providers presented to the Queen in Berwick as owners of businesses badly hit by the epidemic.
Later that day Anne met the Queen again, this time at County Hall, where both were guests at a lunch given by Northumberland County Council. The Queen remembered Anne through a joke she had made at Berwick.

Anne recalls: "The Queen was absolutely charming and obviously very well informed about foot-and-mouth. She was interested in my business and I told her I ran a 17th Century coaching inn. "I said that in the old days it would have taken her 44 hours by coach from London to reach Wooler, and she laughed and said she had spent seven hours on the train getting to Berwick" That, then, has been the highlight of Anne's year, and she can certainly remember the low points. She tactfully does not mention her meeting with Michael Meacher, Minister of State for the Environment, in this category.

The year had started brightly after an excellent business year in 2000, and she was prepared for an even better 12 months. Bookings, after all, were already coming in steadily in January. She had invested money in new beds, new matching curtains, new staff uniforms and in-house training for employees.

But February brought the first major setback ~ Wooler was hit by a snowstorm. The Tankerville Arms was without electricity for five days. Six guests couldn't get away. There was no heating. Cooking was done on a gas range lit by candles. locals came into the hotel looking for food.

When the electricity was restored, Anne and her staff had bedrooms, public bars and dining rooms to clean, fridges and freezers to empty and then restock - and great piles of laundry to be tackled. That was only the start.

In late February came foot-and-mouth and then the phone started ringing - not with new bookings, but cancellations. Eight block bookings for walking parties were among the first to go. American tourists for June, July, August and September cancelled.

With local footpaths closed, walkers did not want to know about Wooler. All through March the cancellations poured in. There was a brief respite from the gloom at Easter, when the weather, but not the foot & mouth, relented.People started corning to Wooler again. But not for long. The faint-hearted might have packed in. Anne Park, however, is made of sterner stuff. Even before the Queen's visit, and some sorely-needed compensation from the regional development agency One NorthEast for loss of trade, she resolved to drum up business. She advertised budget Pasta and Puddings on Friday nights and budget Roast Beef and Pudding on Sunday nights. Both have proved a big success.

Fortunately, Anne's staff have been very supportive during the bleak days. It has been a truly great local effort. The chef Ashley Fiddes, his wife Elaine, the assistant chef Monica Howie and another dozen or so staff have all made sure the much smaller number of customers this year have still been well looked after.
Anne acknowledges her good fortune in having such a willing crew, and she has now re-launched her investment programme with new signs for the hotel and a big new advertising board on Wooler's outskirts telling motorists about the hotel delights awaiting them.

Altogether, it has 16 en-suite bedrooms and family rooms, a restaurant, a bistro, local beers and real ales, and a large car park. Anne, who was a chief stewardess for British Airways before she and her family took over the hotel, knows the importance of looking after her customers, and now bookings are starting to come in again for walking groups, wedding celebrations, company meetings and golf parties.

As the phone starts ringing again, and bookings get pencilled in, the prospects look brighter than they could have done even a month ago. This may have been a funny old year for Anne.But if, through it all, she can crack a joke that makes the Queen laugh, there must surely be hope for country house hotels, even after foot and mouth.