The House
The House
Inside the Hideaway
The Hideaway
The house is the upper two storeys of a three storey building. The ground floor is a separately owned property. I think it should therefore be called a ‘maisonette’. However, that makes it sound quite small, and it’s anything but. With three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two reception rooms, and a large attic, it’s really quite spacious. Add in the high ceilings and a surprisingly usable upstairs landing, and you have what feels like a large house.
The living room
The living room is where I spend most of my time. There’s a terrific view, and a lovely fireplace. I don’t have curtains on the downstairs windows, which takes a bit of getting used to, but the fact is the room is no overlooked, and I prefer watching night fall, rather than shutting it out. There’s a really good record deck and separates hi-fi system and a decent TV for watching the hundreds(?) of DVDs that I’ve got stashed away in the yellow cabinet, or for watching streaming services. There is no TV licence so absolutely no live TV is allowed.
The dining room
The dining room has a very large table and a wonderful view (with fewer telephone wires in the way). It’s a little colder than than the living room, but is great for larger gatherings.
The kitchen
The galley kitchen is small and looks out over the back garden. It’s really well equipped and has a gas cooker and dishwasher.
Looking down to the hallway from the landing
The upstairs landing is where I work and write. It has a desk at the far end, and the two velux windows make it light and airy. People find the internal stairs very steep.
Main bedroom
The main bedroom has a king size bed and a wonderful view. It has an adjoiing door to the upstairs bathroom, so it’s kind of ‘en suite’.
Main bedroom window with butler mirror
As mentioned above, the bed is king size. And so is the view. The convex butler mirror lets you glimpse parts of the bay and the town while having a lie in.
Single bedroom
The single bedroom also has a view of the bay. It’s got one single bed in it, and room for an inflatable bed to go alongside.
Lighthouse bedroom
The lighthouse bedroom was designed as a children’s bedroom. It’s got two single beds, one of them a narrow 2 foot 6 inch bed.
The upstairs bathroom is spacious and has a very large power shower. Water heating is mainly from solar panels, but can be topped up if needed by the gas central heating.
There’s also a downstairs bathroom, with a large bath and power shower. This is mostly used as a cloakroom. The bath is useful for rinsing off swimming gear and sandy clothes immediately you come in the front door, after a day at Coldingham. The hot water tank isn’t really big enough to give a nice deep bath and the upstairs shower is much more spacious.
There’s also a shed in the back garden with a washing machine and tumble drier, though the ‘raisable’ clothes line is brilliant for drying stuff without the need to run the tuble drier. The washing machine cannot be used on occasion in the winter because the pipes can freeze (it is usually working).
Watch the boats coming in and out of the harbour…