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Catherine

Catherine

Always with a head full of dreams, I have imagined for many years, starting my own hospitality business to provide a romantic hideaway for couples to recharge and immerse themselves in this beautiful landscape that we are privileged to call home.

As a student, I worked in many hospitality settings and in varying roles in busy pubs, restaurants and hotels. I love to connect with people but my love for creativity and the Arts drew me towards the teaching profession rather than Hospitality but I knew it was something that I would return to one day. 

A city girl by birth but always drawn to the countryside and nature, my husband James and I re-located from Newcastle to Tynedale over 21 years ago with our then, 7-month-old son Ollie. Soon after, we had our daughter Phoebe and so began the exciting process of laying down roots and building a life in this beautiful place.

I love doing anything creative but especially interior design, picking up unique items at auction and renovating and repurposing them. As a family we love to be outdoors, walking with our dogs or working in the garden. I am responsible for growing all of the fruit and vegetables in the kitchen garden and flowers for the table in the cutting garden and James is the groundsman who lovingly tends the lawns and verges.

I love to cook and make preserves and jams from our home-grown produce as well as hedgerow foraging to make our annual batches of Sloe gin and Elderflower cordial. With the addition of our small flock of adorable pedigree hens four years ago, I now do even more baking and spend far too much time taking selfies with them!

For over twenty-five years, I taught in several North-East Primary schools and ended up teaching Music and Forest School in a wonderful Primary school in Gateshead, which was probably more to do with my propensity for singing very loudly and the ability to not feel the cold, rather than any specific talent!

In 2020, after reluctantly retiring early, from my very much-loved teaching career and with the unwavering support of my family, I decided that life is too short to fill it with dreams and now I had the time and energy to fulfil them and make them our reality and so the Hiddle Hut plans began!!