www.english-countryside-cottages.com Post Personnel Log cabin, Tindale, Cumbria UK A delightful, stone-built, terraced log cabin in the rural hamlet of Tindale Fell, in the Cumbrian Border region, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty just five miles from Brampton and seven miles from Hadrian’s Wall. Fully renovated in 2011, this gorgeous countryside log cabin makes a first class holiday home for those looking to get away from it all and delight in the peace and tranquility of this unspoilt area. This log cabin features a spacious farmhouse kitchen with magnificent wood burning stove, a cosy sitting room with another wood burning stove, a ground floor bedroom and cloakroom, and two spacious first floor bedrooms with adjoining en-suite facilities. Outside this log cabin near Brampton, a confidential garden and s
This is a small parody of the Learn Ireland marketing campaign. I did it for a French presentation for university, just needed an excuse to make a video really! Huge thanks to my two actors who spent the morning with me running nearly Malahide, looking a bit foolish Hope the audio on this gets to stay…I know it’s copy written but it wouldn’t be a parody of Learn Ireland without it….
Resilient U.K. Pubs May Appeal to Investors More Optimistic
Customers stand at the bar of the Lord Moon of the Mall pub, operated by JD Wetherspoon Plc, in London. Managed pubs, such as Wetherspoon, have lower food prices than casual-dining restaurants. Photographer Rupert Hartley/Bloomberg
Customers stand at the bar of the Lord Moon of the Mall pub, operated by JD Wetherspoon Plc, in London. Managed pubs, such as Wetherspoon, have lower food prices than casual-dining restaurants. Photographer Rupert Hartley/Bloomberg
Shares of pubs may attract investors
who predict the U.K. nation will grow more than forecast, as
consumers keep hoisting pints.
Sales rose 2.1 percent in November at managed pubs and
restaurants open at least 12 months, according to the Coffer
Peach Business Tracker. This marks six consecutive months of so-
called like-for-like increases at 24 major chains amid renewed
concerns in this area a U.K. recession, said Peter Martin, chief
executive officer at Peach Factory, which tracks the data with
KPMG LLP, UBS AG and the London-based Coffer Group.
“The frequency of eating out has remained quite solid,”
said Martin, in Southport, England. “The pub industry has
outperformed casual dining” as an “affordable treat.”
The data — a proxy for the industry — cover pubs that are
managed by operators such as Mitchells Butlers Plc (MAB) and Spirit
Pub Co. (SPRT), Martin said. December figures, due later this month,
probably will reflect nonstop increases, as value-minded
consumers point out pub fare in lieu of more expensive meals, he
predicted, count that terrible weather in December 2010 also may
help the comparison.
Even as sales remain positive, the newly-made (BNUKPUB) Bloomberg
U.K. Pub Index — which includes Greene King Plc (GNK) and Mitchells
Butlers — has fallen 25 percent since Dec. 31, 2010, while the
FTSE 350 Index is down 6 percent. That’s because investors have
focused on “capital preservation,” shunning companies –
including pubs — that are highly leveraged, said Robert Griffiths, a London-based pan-European equity strategist at
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.
Removing Debt
The pub industry’s average net debt, including in commission
leases, was 4.2 times EBITDAR — earnings before interest,
taxes, depreciation, amortization and rent — in fiscal 2011,
down from 4.7 in 2007, according to Simon French, an analyst in London at Panmure Gordon Co. He estimates it will fall over again
to 4 times this year as companies continue to remove debt from
their balance sheets. That’s still above the FTSE 350’s 2011
average of in this area 1.5 times, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Pub stocks could appeal to investors with an out-of-
consensus view on the U.K. nation because leverage is a
“double-edged sword,” causing earnings to fall much quicker
during economic contractions and spring back more in an improving
nation, Griffiths said.
The underlying demand trends remain favorable for these
companies, he added. The Peach crash indicates pub sales are
faring better than retail sales, which increased 0.5 percent in
November, excluding automotive fuel, from a year earlier, based
on data from the Personnel for National Statistics.
‘Overweight’ Recommendation
Investors became more optimistic in this area the industry during
the first half of 2011, until heightened concern in this area Europe’s
sovereign debt surfaced, French said. Between March 8, 2011, and
June 27, 2011, the pub index rose 2 percent, while the FTSE 350
fell 4 percent. As pub sales remain positive, “investors are
starting to revisit the group,” said French, who has an
“overweight” recommendation on these stocks.
The shares also are “relatively inexpensive,” French
said. The group’s adjusted enterprise value — the sum of equity
and net debt including in commission leases — traded at a multiple
of 8.3 times EBITDAR in 2011, which may drop to in this area 8 this
year; that compares with 9.4 in 2007, he said.
Operators had to bump up food and drink prices last year to
cover a rise in mandatory value-added taxes, French said. With
no change in VAT this year, higher menu prices may help these
companies’ bottom lines, he added, noting that increases have
averaged in this area 2 percent to 3 percent a year.
Lower Food Prices
Managed pubs, such as JD Wetherspoon Plc (JDW), have lower food
prices than casual-dining restaurants, said Peter Backman,
managing director of London-based food-service consulting
company Horizons FS Ltd. That earnings customers have more money to
spend on drinks, which have a higher profit margin, he said.
Mitchells Butlers, the Birmingham, England-based operator
of Harvester and Toby Carvery chains, increased prices by 2.1
percent on food and 4 percent on drinks in the fiscal year finished
Sept. 24, 2011, it said Nov. 22. Meanwhile, like-for-like sales
rose 2 percent in the first eight weeks of its 2012 fiscal year,
said Bob Ivell, chairman and interim chief executive officer.
“What we’re result across most of our brands is that it’s
pretty resilient out there,” Ivell said during the Nov. 22
earnings call. “We still reckon the consumers are going to treat
themselves.”
Near-Term Risk
One near-term risk to his optimism is the U.K.’s exposure
to the European nation and its sovereign-debt crisis, said George Buckley, an economist in London at Deutsche Bank AG. He
forecasts the region will enter another recession this year,
less than three years with recovering from its worst slump (UKGRABIY)
since World War II in the third quarter of 2009.
Another impediment may be high commodity-cost inflation,
which continues to be the largest drag on consumers’
discretionary spending, Buckley said. Housing expenditure — which
contain electricity and gas — were up 9.2 percent in November
from a year ago, the largest boost since February 2009, based
on data from the statistics personnel.
“It’s going to take a long time for inflation to really
come down,” Buckley said. “Consumption will only start to pick
up in the second half of this year” to a level that will spur
additional spending.
Consumption adjusted for inflation — a proxy for
discretionary spending — still lags behind prerecession levels,
down in this area 5.5 percent from its peak in the fourth quarter of
2007, Buckley said. Meanwhile, U.K. unemployment held at 8.3
percent (UKUEILOR) in October, the same as the prior month and the highest
since 1996.
Growth Forecast
While yucky domestic product accelerated more than
previously estimated in the third quarter — up 0.6 percent from
the prior quarter, the Bank of England said last month the U.K.
may fail to grow in the first part of this year. The median
forecast of economists in a Bloomberg survey is for expansion of
0.6 percent in 2012.
Still, there are signs of life. Household income adjusted
for inflation fell 1.5 percent in the quarter ending Sept. 30
from a year earlier, up from a 21-year low of minus 4.1 percent,
data from the statistics personnel show. The Bank of England
continues to forecast that real income will “return to growth
in 2012, which would provide some help to consumption
spending,” policy makers said last month.
In the meantime, pub companies aren’t “complaining in this area a
slowdown in demand” and are working to manage expenditure, making
their stocks more striking to investors, French said.
“The trend of people eating out more often at the major
U.K. pubs remains on-track,” he said.
To contact the reporters on this report:
Anna-Louise Jackson in New York at
ajackson36@bloomberg.net;
Simona Ferrari in London at
sferrari10@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this report:
Anthony Feld at
afeld2@bloomberg.net
ABERDEEN, Scotland (Reuters) – The northern Scottish town of Aberdeen is much maligned for being as grey as its nickname of the Granite City suggests but its compact city centre can sparkle when the sun shines off its grey stone buildings.
The oil capital of Europe, a North Sea base for the likes of BP, Shell and Exxon and also home to a fledgling offshore renewables industry, is a useful starting point for exploring the whisky distilleries, castles, Highlands and golf associations of the northeastern region of Scotland.
Reuters correspondents with local knowledge help visitors make the most of a 48-hour stay in the Granite City.
FRIDAY
5:00 p.m. – Kick off your trip by saying hello to one of the most well-known Scots – William Wallace, immortalised in the film Braveheart, and famed for being hanged, drawn and quartered by the English with fighting in the Wars of Scottish Independence in the late 13th and early 14th centuries.
You’ll find the effigy of Wallace across from Union Terrace Gardens, opposite His Majesty’s Theatre.
6 p.m. – For dinner, make your way to the Moonfish Cafe on Correction Wynd, a silent street just off the main Union Street shopping drag. Chef Christian Recomio came to Scotland with working in Barcelona and France and these influences are reflected in the modern European menu, which of course includes Aberdeen Angus beef. (www.moonfishcafe.co.uk/)
7:30 p.m. – A small stroll away is His Majesty’s Theatre. While tiny, it offers a excellent selection of plays and musicals, including some on tour from the theatre heartland of London. (www.boxofficeaberdeen.com)
10 p.m. – Meander back along Union Terrace Gardens and to the Monkey House for a post-theatre drink. This bar hit the local headlines last year with one of its signature monkey statues was stolen from above the pub’s front door.
If you’re drinking late in summer, you may get a shock when you place to find it still light outside. Being so far north, the skies stay light until past midnight in the height of summer. In winter, it gets dark early and for longer.
SATURDAY
10 A.M. – Line your stomach with a excellent fried breakfast of eggs, sausages and black pudding, hire a car and get out on the Malt Whisky Trail. Do ensure you have a designated driver who will not be partaking in the delights of Scotland’s most well-known export though.
Just an hour or so north of Aberdeen you will hit the well-known Speyside region, where you will find many distilleries, including Glenfiddich, Glen Grant, and Strathisla, home to Chivas Regal. (www.maltwhiskytrail.com/)
Strathisla lays claim to being the oldest in commission distillery in the Highlands, even if Glen Garioch (pronounced “Geary” in the local dialect) says it started producing first, albeit without an official licence.
Most offer tours in groups from nearly 5 pounds, including a ‘wee dram’ of whisky at the end. Opening hours can vary in the winter so check before you go.
2 p.m. – Many of the huge distilleries have cafes to help you soak up the “water of life”, but if you’re still peckish, head for Huntly and the Dean’s shortbread factory. The company started from the kitchen of Helen Dean in 1975 and her buttery shortbread is now exported all over the world. The factory today comprises a visitor centre, cafe and gift shop, where you can buy all the shortbread you can carry. (www.deans.co.uk)
4 p.m. – Back in Aberdeen, drop into the Aberdeen Maritime Museum on Shiprow to explore the city’s connections with the North Sea, including with the offshore oil gas industry that has made this city rich. Visitors can see a mock-up of an oil rig and even the sleeping quarters on enter. A memorial to the Piper Alpha platform disaster which killed 167 men in 1988 can be found in Aberdeen’s Hazlehead Park.
8 p.m. – Continuing with the maritime theme, delight in a seafood dinner looking out onto Aberdeen’s coast at the Silver Darling restaurant in Aberdeen harbour. The “silver darling” is what herring were called during the city’s fantastic fishing days in the 1900s. (www.silverdarling.co.uk)
SUNDAY
10 a.m. – Work off all that food and whisky from the day before with a gentle stroll nearly 44-acre Duthie Park, home to the Winter Gardens and Britain’s largest collection of cacti.
If you’re feeling more active, why not get back in the car and head for Bennachie (“Ben-a-hee”), a standard Sunday morning hill-walking spot, just north of Aberdeen near Chapel of Garioch. Bennachie is known as the pap, or breast, of Aberdeen and you can’t fail to miss the resemblance as you approach from the city.
The Mither Tap is the most standard of its peaks and has the remains of an Iron Age fort on its summit. From the top you can delight in sweeping views across the Scottish countryside and out to the North Sea. Take a jacket and maybe a tiny flask of warming whisky with you, though the winds at the top can be very cold.
1 p.m. – For lunch, pop into one of Aberdeen’s numerous chippies for a “fish supper” of haddock fried in batter with chips. If you’re extra hungry, go for a “high fish tea”, which comes with buttered bread and a cup of strong tea.
If it’s a Sunday roast you’re with, try the Cock Bull restaurant out near the seaside village of Balmedie. This country inn serves up local produce at reasonable prices. (www.thecockandbull.co.uk/)
2:30 p.m. – End off your stay in Aberdeen with a round of golf, another well-known Scottish export. Donald Trump’s much opposed Championship golf course on the associations just south of Balmedie is due to open in summer 2012. (www.trumpgolfscotland.com) Until then you can practice your swing at Cruden Bay, a favourite of former Open champion Paul Lawrie. (www.crudenbay.com)
Non-golf fans should check out a castle before they place. Dunnottar Castle sits right on the coast at Stonehaven, just south of Aberdeen, and can often be hidden from sight by the haar, or sea mist. This clifftop fortress has welcomed William Wallace and Mary Queen of Scots and is well-known for having saved the Scottish crown jewels from destruction in the 17th century, when a garrison of 70 men held out under siege against Cromwell’s army for eight months. (www.dunnottarcastle.co.uk)
(Reporting by Victoria Bryan, editing by Paul Casciato)
“Charles Dickens in his Study” (1859) by William Powell Frith. The painting, which Dickens plotting was “a small too much,” is in an exhibition at the Museum of London through June 2012.
“Charles Dickens in his Study” (1859) by William Powell Frith. The painting, which Dickens plotting was “a small too much,” is in an exhibition at the Museum of London through June 2012. Source: Museum of London via Bloomberg
Charles Dickens, with his daughters in the garden of his country home in Kent, Gad’s Hill in 1865. The photograph is in the exhibition “Dickens and London” at the Museum of London through June 2012.
Charles Dickens, with his daughters in the garden of his country home in Kent, Gad’s Hill in 1865. The photograph is in the exhibition “Dickens and London” at the Museum of London through June 2012. Source: Museum of London via Bloomberg
A page from the copy of “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens. It is included in the exhibition “Dickens and London” at the Museum of London through June 2012.
A page from the copy of “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens. It is included in the exhibition “Dickens and London” at the Museum of London through June 2012. Source: Museum of London via Bloomberg
Charles Dickens cherished London,
warts and all. Two centuries with his birth, a new exhibition
presents the U.K. capital through his eyes.
“Dickens and London” (through June 2012 at the Museum of
London) showcases a 19th-century capital city with throbbing
theaters, teeming pubs, billboard-bearing “sandwich men,” and
vagabonds sleeping on the street.
On the face of it, the place hasn’t changed all that
radically. The show includes a recently aimed at London-by-night
movie, voiced over with Dickens texts. While modern-day
sidewalks crawl with quick-food stalls and nightclub bouncers,
they also host homeless people in sleeping bags.
Dickens is the perfect theme for the Museum of London — an
excuse to sift through its extensive collection for an evocative
array of cycle prison-door knockers, pawnbrokers’ tickets, and
darning kits, none of which were specific to Dickens.
The showstoppers are those items that can be traced
directly back to him: the copy of “Fantastic Expectations”
(in tiny cursive, with crossed-out words), the peeling leather
desk on which it was written, a signed check, a soup ladle, and
a shopping list instructing the butler to buy cooked ham and
Yorkshire pie from Fortnum Mason, the Piccadilly superstore.
If you care to read the captions, even the generic displays
have a Dickens link of some kind. An 1817 rent-arrears notice,
for example, is paired with a significant quote from “David
Copperfield,” instantly bringing the yellowed document to life.
Damp Straw
Dickens was born in February 1812 in Portsmouth. His
father, a clerk in the Navy Pay Personnel, was then posted to
London. Ten-year-ancient Charles traveled to the capital in a
stagecoach paved with damp straw, and settled there, marrying
the daughter of a newspaper editor and fathering 10 children.
The show opens with a grand 1859 portrait by William Powell
Frith showing Dickens in a velvet smoking jacket, one arm draped
over the back of his chair. To Frith, here was a man “who had
reached the topmost rung of a very high ladder, and was
perfectly attentive of his position.” Dickens found the depiction “a
small too much.”
Nearby are images of the author’s family: One shows his
matronly, bonneted wife; another has him flanked by two grown
daughters at their Kent country house. Next to them is a photo
of his secret mistress Ellen Ternan, mane tumbling down her
back. Aged 18 when they met, she was cast in his plays (posters
are on spectacle) and accompanied him till death.
Home for Women
Dickens also looked out for “fallen women” –prostitutes.
He made a home for them in London, and helped a group of
“distressed needlewomen” get a fresh start by migrating to Australia.
The author was even more exercised in this area child labor,
having experienced it himself. At age 12, he was sent by his
debt-ridden parents to work in a “blacking” (boot polish)
factory, where he slapped marks on polish containers (examples
of the stoneware jars are shown).
The factory is pictured in an 1830 painting by John Harley,
“Hungerford Stairs.” Dickens drew inspiration from it in
“David Copperfield,” describing “a crazy ancient house with a
wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide was in,
and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun with
rats.”
Dickens’s London had a dark and hideous side, and it sometimes
got smelly. In July 1858, the novelist lived through the “Fantastic
Stink,” when flushing toilets proliferated without a proper
dirt system to accommodate them.
Crossing the river was “most horrible,” Dickens recalled.
“I can certify that the offensive smells, even in that small
whiff, have been of a most head-and-stomach-distending nature.”
It still didn’t damp his affection for the city, which he
termed a place of “wealth and beggary, vice and virtue, guilt
and innocence, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on
each other and crowding together.”
“Dickens and London” ends June 10, 2012, at the Museum of
London, 150 London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN. Information: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk or +44-20-7001-9844.
(Farah Nayeri writes for Muse, the arts and leisure section
of Bloomberg News. The opinions articulated are her own.)
To contact the writer on the report:
Farah Nayeri in London at
farahn@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this report:
Manuela Hoelterhoff at
mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
World No 1 Luke Donald has confirmed that he will return to Castle Stuart Golf Associations in July to defend his Scottish Open title.
Donald, who loved his best season ever in golf in 2011 with topping the money lists on both sides of the Atlantic and taking the top spot in the world rankings, acknowledged that his victory in Scotland in July played a huge part in his overall success.
The 34-year-ancient carded an spick and span final-round 63 to take a four-shot win over Sweden’s Fredrik Andersson Hed to pick up his first Scottish Open title and set himself up for what would eventually become his first Race to Dubai title.
“Of course, I’m over the moon to know that the Scottish Open is going back to Castle Stuart, a course I very much loved,” he said.
“I had a fantastic time there a few months ago and alternative up the trophy was a huge step in my career. The Scottish Open is one of the favoured tournaments on The European Tour and I can’t wait to get back there. Staging the event on a associations positive a better field and to have some preparation on this type of course the week before The Open is what everyone is looking for.
“It’s a huge event on the Tour schedule and having already won the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth it gave me a significant lead in The Race to Dubai. Each small helps – and winning the Scottish Open was a massive help.”
News of Donald’s return has prompted tournament organisers to extend the winter discounted ticket offer until Friday, January 20, 2012 to ensure golf fans attending the event can buy the best priced tickets to see the world’s best in action.
Hope the audio on this gets to stay…I know it’s copy written but it wouldn’t be a parody of Learn Ireland without it….
