The bl@~%&!y site e-mail system crashed – again – sending messages off into the wide blue yonder, never to be seen again and certainly not to be read by yours truly. It just so happened that my IT guru was looking at traffic on the site, apparently there is something in Google tools that lets him see when the site is being visited, anyway, he was looking and saw a hit on the contacts page and fully expected a message to come through. After a couple of hours, when nothing had materialised his suspicions were aroused so he checked the system and found, well nothing! It had packed up. After a few ‘Oh dear, that’s a nuisance’ or words to that effect the found the bug and squashed it and assures me it will not raise its ugly head again.

Thank you to the two people who phoned when they did not get a reply and abject apologies to those who tried and failed and simply went away thinking we are ignorant toads.

Thanks to Kavita, who phoned today to make sure of a booking, I discovered the direct e-mail system on this web-site was not working. It said it was, it gave the sender the correct message but simply failed to pass the e-mail on to me! Fortunately No 2 son (IT guru) was here for Easter so was able to get onto the problem straight away and sorted the glitch out so things are now back to normal.

All I can do is apologise to anyone who may have enquired, through the system, in the last couple of weeks and assure them they were not simply ignored, not that I guess they will be rushing back to read the news page if they think I don’t have the manners to reply to them!

We wondered why things had gone a bit quiet recently.

Eating out down there is OK but we found to be a bit hit and miss. One or two of the restaurants we went to are worth giving a miss next time but some of the others were stunning, we even pushed the boat out with a Michelin star place in Dorchester and well worth the effort (and expense!) it was too.

We are back, several pounds heavier and with even more liver damage but also with lots of new foodie ideas which we intend to play with over the next few weeks, so look out for new Michelin inspired items appearing on the menus shortly. Don’t panic, they won’t be Michelin star prices!

You will find there are two direct links on our site to our entry on their site. The first is on each page and takes you to the reviews that have already been posted and I have to say they are all exceedingly complimentary. The second is on our own ‘Guest Comments’ page and gives the opportunity for guests to add their own comments, directly to Tripadvisor, should they so wish (and we hope they do!)

To all our loyal and returning guests, to all those looking for a wonderful place to stay near Oswestry and to all those who just stumble on this site by chance let me say we hope you have had a great Christmas and that the New Year brings you everything you hope for as well as good health and happiness.

Keep an eye open on our ‘Cuisine’ page because the revised menus will be going up very soon.

Thank you again Ross & Isabel

Why did we need a new one I hear you shout, the old one was OK. Yes it was OK but lacked a certain something which at least we think, this one has. You will also see we now have an on-line enquiry system to make customers lives easier and downloadable copies of all our evening meal a la carte menus, so there is no need to wait for yours truly to get around to e-mailing one.

Why long awaited? There were some major technical issues when the site first went live (at least half an hour) or more accurately when just some of the site went live. Great chunks simply vanished into the ether, never to be seen again and this caused a certain amount of head scratching and a lot of re-working all of which had to be fitted in between our tame IT gurus paying work, one of the problems of Dad getting a freebee!

We think the wait was worth it and are more than pleased with the outcome, we hope you like it too and the guest comments both on this site, Google and Tripadvisor, the outstanding facilities described on this site and your desire to be treated and fed like Royalty will help you decide Whitehouse is the best B&B in Oswestry area for your stay.

Many guests think we are simply the best B&B – full stop!

P.S. There might be the odd glitch found over the next few days as we see what links etc have failed to work but I am sure they will be few and fast sorted so please bear with us!