Ode to a Hot Tub

After the most wonderful Lockdown with the children, and the moor all to ourselves, it's back to work with a bang!

The whole world has gone mad! I am chock-a-block with bookings for August - just about all via Airbnb.

This may be because Airbnb has advertised Wydemeet as having a hot tub.

Well now it hasn't. 

The world of hot tubs since Lockdown has gone even crazier than eBikes and indoor gyms!  For the first time, having chundered happily away for years, through heatwaves, hurricanes and blizzards, without ever being turned off; my hot tub decided first to disgorge itself of all water without permission; and then the heater and a pump died.

"Possibly time for a new tub?" suggested work-besieged Alan, who is struggling to keep up with a sudden 1000% increase in demand, and can no longer get hold of any spare parts. "But do bear in mind that to operate legally, you will need to note your chemical levels twice a day, however heavy the horizontal Dartmoor rain, whether it's been used over the last week or not; you'll need to spend a couple of thousand on a commercial chlorine dispenser, and you'll have to change the water every time a different group gets in."

It turns out that a new tub would be £6000, and it wont arrive til January 2021.

"You can increase your prices by 30% if you offer a hot tub," said the distributor of 'Beachcombers'.

"No I can't," I retorted. "I charge quite enough already, and Wydemeet is for walkers.  Before Covid, nobody seemed to care whether I had a hot tub at all, until demand for them went ballistic over Lockdown.  Most people didn't even know it was there! This is the wrong place for people who want a hot tub more than anything else. And under current legislation it makes no commercial nor practical sense whatsoever for a 2-bed B&B to offer the use of one. So no other B&Bs in Wydemeet's category will legally have one either.

My new heater and pump will take several weeks to arrive, and then I will take a view. 

But in the meantime - it's no hot tub, I'm so sorry.  Boo hoo! How about some secret wild swimming in the River Dart, a few minutes walk away, instead?