I really thought I was going to be a better blogger in 2021, but here we are at the end of September and this is the first post I’ve made all year. So what have I been up to?

Well, 2020 ended with us all going back into lockdown, Christmas and New Year bookings cancelled and, initially, no word from the Scottish government that self-catering would be supported, even though we were required by law to close, so I panicked a bit and took out a bounceback loan that would cover the mortgages and bills for a few months. As it was, government support did come through for us, and we were able to have a quiet few months getting the houses in order and wondering when we would be able to open.

It turned out to be the last week of April, at which point things went utterly crackers. This is the 2021 booking calendar for Ethel’s – green is a booked night, dark green is an arrival day, orange is departure and arrival on the same day, blue/grey is where I’ve blocked a day off.

As you can see, barely time to breathe in all that lot and the one for Tor Aluinn looks exactly the same – I have been more grateful than I can possibly express in words to have Emily looking after that house for me, because she does such an incredible job that I don’t have to worry about it.

We’ve also been very lucky in that not too much has gone wrong. A few wifi issues at Tor Aluinn, but I’ve now written a simple troubleshooting guide to the network and put it in the information pack and Emily hasn’t had a call about it since. The only major issues have all been boiler-related – one leaking heating manifold which turned out to be because the expansion vessel in the boiler had filled with water, one cracked oil tank that had to be replaced (did you know you can temporarily plug a small crack in an oil tank by rubbing a bar of soap over it? Neither did I!) and one broken circulation pump.

So what’s coming up next? Ethel’s needs her bathroom replacing and I think I have finally got a plumber lined up to do it in that blocked-off period in November (we would normally be on holiday ourselves then, but we’re not risking it this year). Project 3, which I wrote about here, is now a go – I’ve got the money, we’ve formed a limited company, engaged an architect and we’re just waiting for the bank account to be opened so everything can be transferred into it. I’m really looking forward to getting going on this one, it’s such a beautiful little house, and Pete and I are very much on the same page when it comes to what we want to do with it. I’ve also got the drawings back for our own extension at home and they’re currently with my builder to get an estimate of costs – fingers crossed we can afford to get it done!

It really has been a funny old year to be in the holiday letting business. What we thought would be a brief shutdown to get things under control quickly turned into a major issue. I’ve been thanking my lucky stars that (a) we’re in Scotland, where things seem to have been handled a bit more efficiently than England and (b) we’re in the Highlands where infection rates have remained very low.

I was lucky in that Ethel’s was on business rates and therefore qualified for the £10,000 Covid grant (although initially the Scottish government wasn’t going to give it to self-catering accommodation, unlike the English holiday lets). Coldbackie was supposed to open in May, but couldn’t go onto business rates until it actually did open – all work ground to a halt there and it eventually opened in the last few days of August.

I was initially cheered by the extra cover on my insurance policy, which had a clause that covered me for business interruption caused by “an occurrence of any human infectious or human contagious disease, an outbreak of which must be notified to the local authority” – which you might have thought covered Covid. The insurers disagreed and said that since my premises weren’t themselves affected, just people’s ability to travel to them, no claim was allowed. This has now gone through the courts, fronted by the FCA, and is still rumbling on.

Officially Scotland was allowed to open up its self-catering facilities again at the beginning of July, but our village was extremely nervous about tourists coming back to the area (on the North Coast 500 route, we were flooded with campervans as soon as restrictions lifted), so out of respect for our neighbours we kept Ethel’s closed until the beginning of August, losing another month of what would have been peak income.

Through August, September and October we were packed, back-to-back weeks at Ethel’s and mostly full at Coldbackie even though it was a new launch. We decided not to go for our booking agent’s Safer Stays badge, as one of the criteria for getting it was moving check-out time to 9am and check-in to 5pm – and reading through a couple of Mumsnet threads full of outrage about the idea from people trying to book holidays, we decided we’d stick to the rest of the principles but keep our original times. The extra clean-down with an antiviral spray added about an hour to the turnaround time, but we bought second sets of things like handwash, washing up liquid and so on and just swapped them out each week to quarantine them rather than having to wipe them all down.

And now we’re in November, England is back in lockdown, most of Scotland is in tier 3 and I’m sitting here in tier 1 having gone from a completely fully booked November to a grand total of 12 nights. My two-week Christmas and New Year booking has cancelled (and bless them for cancelling it early and not hanging on, because I might pick up another one from someone within the Highlands) and essentially I’m expecting no money from now until March (which is already full at Ethel’s bar the last few days that start the week going into April!).

That said, if no income over winter, when I’m losing about £290 a week, means I can open all summer in 2021, when I make about £900 a week, I’ll take this current shutdown. With the news about the Pfizer vaccine breaking a few days ago, I’m hopeful that 2021 will be a brighter year for business.