How are we doing our bit?
When you stay at Exmoor House you'll spot evidence of our green activities around the place: here’s some more information, Rosi’s ramblings… and some tips we hope you may find helpful.

Paper logs/briquettes for the fire
We make these out of newspaper, used office paper, paper towels & napkins, cardboard tubes, etc. We tear the paper into strips, soak it in water (from the waterbutts in our back yard) for about 24 hours then squeeze the water out with a specially-designed press (made by Eko-Mania among others). After that, the logs need to dry out thoroughly before they’re used. This can take several weeks. On our open fire, we’ve found that the paper briquettes work best when used in conjunction with wooden logs, since they tend to smoulder rather than burn and they produce a very fine ash which could stifle the fire if they’re used on their own.

‘Air fresheners’ made with essential oils
A way to use fewer nasty artificial chemicals. If you want to try this at home: put a small amount of bland-smelling alcohol (e.g. cheap vodka) in a spray bottle, add a few drops of essential oils of your choice and top up the bottle with spring water or distilled water. Shake bottle before use, and keep it out of young children’s reach. The alcohol helps distribute the oils throughout the mix and also acts as a preservative. If you don’t want to use alcohol, a bit of glycerine, or a tiny drop of washing up liquid, helps the mix.
I also make disinfectant and ‘mothballs’ using essential oils; talk to me if you’d like further details.
As an aside, something that makes me wonder: you know in ads for air fresheners they’re always going on about getting rid of cooking smells? Well, if the food smells so bad, why are people eating it?

Monitoring energy & water use
We have an ‘Owl’ electricity monitor, to tell us how much electricity is being used at any given moment. It’s useful for checking any anomalies (and pretty scary when we have the large oven going and the kettle on). We have 2 electricity meters, and did at one point have a monitor for each meter – unfortunately, we discovered that this didn’t work too well; the signals got confused!
We read the electricity and water meters each week, logging how much we’ve used and comparing it year on year (so far, we’ve managed to reduce usage each year).

The Bug Hotel (and other animals)
… because insects need somewhere to stay too! Our Bug Hotel is in one corner of the guest patio. It looks like a small pile of old bricks, branches and tree bark, but is in fact luxury, eco-friendly self-catering apartments.
For other small guests, we have bee-friendly plants in the garden, and we leave seedheads and some dead leaves around over winter to provide food & shelter. The birds get any leftover toast, etc…

Food ingredients
You’ll have gathered that we make just about everything ourselves – which means that our food does not contain any artificial flavourings, colourings or dodgy e-numbers. For example, our home-made bread contains 4 things: flour, water, yeast and a bit of salt. Now read the ingredients list on a pack of shop-bought bread…
We use butter rather than margarine, because it’s more natural (though if you can’t tolerate milk products or prefer to avoid butter, we can give you dairy-free sunflower spread instead, and can use the spread, or vegetable oil, in cooking, as appropriate). And we purposely don’t stock ‘diet’ drinks: if you want to be put off them for life, just try Googling aspartame.

Dinner orders
On the day guests arrive, we take their orders for dinner shortly after they check in (or before that, if they’re going to be arriving relatively late). For subsequent days, dinner orders are taken after breakfast. This means that we can cook exactly what’s needed, minimising waste, and also that we can plan the cooking to use energy most efficiently.

Lightbulbs
We’re gradually changing over to low-energy lightbulbs, as the older ones ‘go’. Interestingly, some of the older (not so low energy) bulbs have been in place since before we moved here in 2006, whereas we’ve had to change other (low-energy, and supposedly longlife) bulbs several times. However, one low-energy bulb has been in operation since 1988, moving house with us several times. It cost a small fortune at the time, but has been well worth it.

Microfibre cloths
A wonderful invention – they clean absolutely brilliantly, using less cleaning product to achieve the same (or better) results. You just need to use a bit more elbow grease… thereby getting some healthy exercise while you clean. We find that many stains can be removed with just a microfibre cloth and a little bit of water.

Alternative cleaning materials
Currently we use Bio-D loo cleaner, general-purpose hard surface cleaner, eucalyptus disinfectant, glass cleaner and polish. They’re pretty good, and free of noxious ingredients. We’ve tried several washing-up liquids, e.g. Ecover, Bio-D, Northern Environmental – they all work fine but you need to use a bit more, especially on greasy items. Dishwasher tablets: Ecover and Green Force are both good, but we do a wash with a conventional tablet once in a while, which helps keep the inside of the dishwasher clean too.
For cleaning the inside of fridges and freezers, bicarbonate of soda is still the best. Bicarb + white vinegar is good for keeping drains clean and sweet. And if you have any out-of-date soft drinks, such as a certain one beginning with C-C, they’re handy as a loo soak (it’s the acid).

The laundry
Ecover liquid cleans well (personally I’m not so keen on their powder – I’ve found it doesn’t dissolve well at low temperatures and clogs up the machine). However Ecover doesn’t get your whites whiter than white, and greyish towels are not very fetching, so we do give things a boost with non-biological Persil or Fairy every so often. The other thing with Ecover is that it doesn’t give that ‘just washed’ scent to the laundry. Drying it outdoors helps a bit, as does putting a couple of drops of lavender essential oil in the rinse (but I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you’re washing delicate items).
Generally we wash everything at 40°C - except teatowels and cleaning cloths, which get a boil wash. Our repair man tells us that an occasional very hot wash is good for the washing machine, giving its insides a good clean, cutting down on maintenance and possibly extending its life.
We use the tumble dryer for towels – because otherwise they have the texture of cardboard – but we don’t tumble-dry anything else and we use dryer balls instead of fabric softener. I’m not convinced that the dryer balls reduce drying time very much, but they do get rid of the cardboard effect.

Stain removal
White vinegar is helpful for some stains, as is borax. We also use White Wizard paste, which works well (the manufacturers don’t divulge their ingredients, beyond saying they’re natural and harmless). The original Vanish bars are good, if you can get hold of them (and more environmentally friendly than the liquid or tablets).
Especially tough stains, like rust marks and some makeup*, respond well to lemon juice + salt + sunlight, but this method is rather labour intensive (and weather dependent). Sometimes we have to resort to more chemically-based stain removers.
* There’s a particular kind of foundation which is really, really difficult to remove from our lovely white towels. I can only assume it must be mineral makeup. If you do use it, please (please) would you ask us for a dark coloured face towel? (But you have to wonder, what’s it doing to your skin…? There may be a lot of permanently orange people around in a few years’ time)

Recyclables from the bedrooms
If you take any bottles or cans from the bar up to your room, you can leave the empties in the blue bin on the landing, to be recycled. Any used batteries from shavers, torches etc can also go in there. Teabags, coffee bags and any other compostable waste like fruit skins can be left on your room tray (there’s a little ‘teabags’ holder on there) and we’ll sort it out. We’ll use any newspapers, etc, in our paper briquettes.

These are just some examples of what we’re doing; if you’ve any queries at all, do please ask.

To check availability at Exmoor House, or make a booking, just call Rosi & Frank on
01643 841432, or email us: info@exmoorhouse.com

Exmoor House at Wheddon Cross (Exmoor's highest village) offers excellent guest accommodation and great food. Whether you want to walk, cycle, explore Exmoor or simply relax, it's a very special place to stay. If you book several nights dinner, bed & breakfast there are various special breaks packages

For further information about the Green Tourism Business Scheme, visit www.green-business.co.uk

A few recommended books (in no particular order – they’re just some I like)

Hope L Bourne:
Wild Harvest
Living on Exmoor
Wise words from an amazing woman

Janey Lee Grace:
Imperfectly Natural Woman
Imperfectly Natural Home
Living more naturally without adopting a hair shirt

Leslie Kenton:
Healing Herbs
Includes an excellent detox and recipes for shampoo, etc

Pat Thomas:
Cleaning Yourself to Death
The chemicals in household cleaners, and alternatives to try

James Ferguson:
The Vitamin Murders
One man investigates a conspiracy theory and makes some unexpected discoveries

Louise Riotte:
Carrots Love Tomatoes
Companion planting and natural pest control

William Cobbett:
Cottage Economy
Classic treatise on self-sufficiency

Chas Griffin:
Scenes from a Smallholding
More Scenes from a Smallholding
Hilarious, moving and thought-provoking

(ed) The Ecologist:
Go M.A.D.
Large and small ways to make a difference

Clarissa Dickson-Wright & Johnny Scott:
A Greener Life
Down-to-earth advice on every aspect of going green

Jekka McVicar:
Jekka’s Complete Herb Book
My ‘bible’ for growing and looking after herbs

Valerie Ann Worwood:
The Fragrant Pharmacy
Using essential oils around the home and to enhance wellbeing

Richard Mabey:
Flora Britannica
A wonderful book to dip into

To check availability at Exmoor House, or make a booking, just call Rosi & Frank on
01643 841432, or email us: info@exmoorhouse.com

Exmoor House at Wheddon Cross (Exmoor's highest village) offers excellent guest accommodation and great food. Whether you want to walk, cycle, explore Exmoor or simply relax, it's a very special place to stay. If you book several nights dinner, bed & breakfast there are various special breaks packages

For further information about the Green Tourism Business Scheme, visit www.green-business.co.uk

Exmoor House • Wheddon Cross
Exmoor National Park
Somerset TA24 7DU
tel (01643) 841432 • e-mail: info@exmoorhouse.com