Cottage Industry

Sticking my tongue out when making calculations is a habit that I would better myself without. Having gasped at the steps, scratched my head at the metrics, the tongue was retracted when I worked out that the walk had been fifteen miles. And what a yomp it had been! Out of Burbage, along the southern ridge that borders Salisbury Plain, across the vale via its namesake, Pewsey, and up the hill at Oare to walk back homewards, gazing at West Woods and Savernake Forest from the top of the meadow flower encrusted downs.

There have been many sticking out tongue moments over the last few months, calculating what will and won’t work. “Test. Test. Test.”, an old business mentor once told me. As you know, I am a jeweller. Something that my brother and I have done very well for many years. Long may that continue in multiple guises. But changing the actual experience of that purchase is something that not only intrigues me, it inspires me. Yes, I am an old romantic.

So think about that very special purchase, whether a twentieth anniversary present or bespoke engagement ring. Can you imagine a service so relaxing and personable that you wanted to stay in a cosy cottage, eat home cooked food around the kitchen table, chat through design, metal and stones with the expert then just sit back by the fire in the near four hundred year old blacksmithy and have a glass of something that tickles you?

Or maybe consider other art, paintings, photography and woodwork? Even take in an event in the house or garden such as a barbeque, live music gig, pop up restaurant, lecture, poetry or prose evening? Or you could just fill your time with a long walk in the hills that have been the destination for travellers and pilgrims for millenia, to ancient barrows and circles of stone and wheat, depending on the sun’s annual cycle? Back at the cottage, in the garden’s enormous yurt (The Temple of Transcendence), you could wind down with a host of wellbeing and spiritual experiences including meditation, breathwork, sound baths, PandoraStar light, drum circles, yin yoga, dreamcatcher workshops, tarot readings, Cacao (pure chocolate) or Chanupa (Native American peace pipe) ceremonies?

Well, you can. My beautiful thatched home is now all these things. Shop, eat, drink, walk, talk, pop in, stay, listen, laugh, relax and come away having had the most magical experience that you can imagine. Who said romance was dead? Not with me in charge of this love ship. The laws of supply and demand will soon indicate which your favourites are but know that everything is curated, and eventually calculated, for you in the Spirit of Wiltshire.

Guy Shepherd