Doing our bit for Blue Cross Suffolk

Blue Cross Suffolk is all about animals and you probably know by now (and if you still don’t know, where have you been?!) that our luxury, historic Dutch barges are dog-friendly. That’s right, your canine friends don’t have to stay at home! We’re more than happy for them to enjoy your holiday with you.

It’s this dog-friendly approach that has led us to help Blue Cross Suffolk with their fundraising efforts. Originally based in Felixstowe, the Blue Cross’ Suffolk rehoming centre moved to larger facilities in Ipswich in order to increase their capacity. Here they look after dogs, cats and smaller animals such as rabbits who are looking for homes. We were ‘found’ by the Blue Cross as one of their team has stayed with us!

Some of these animals come to the Blue Cross with injuries or health issues, and some have even been known to give birth while at their facilities! With all of this going on, the Blue Cross needs donations in order to keep giving these animals medical care, food, behavioural training and, above all, help them find a ‘forever home’.

One of the ways that we can help with raising donations is to provide collection boxes on our barges – so that’s just what we’re doing! We’re going to place a collection box on each of our barges, as well as one in the bike shed at our Woodfarm Barns luxury holiday cottage destination. If you have any loose change, feel free to pop it in the collection box and your donation will go towards helping animals in need.

As Tesco says, ‘every little helps’. Although we’re not a big, greedy corporation, we’re believers in this statement and we hope that this effort on our part and that of our guests will help make a difference.

Our dog-friendly barges

Did we mention that we’re dog-friendly? Sometimes we feel as if we harp on about it a lot, but there are still lots of lovely new visitors to our site that don’t know this fact!

We happily welcome up to three well-behaved dogs on each of our barges, and we’re sure that they’ll love their stay as much as you do. In fact, we’re proud to say that we’ve got a bit of a reputation for great dog-friendly holidays, as we’ve been awarded the ‘Quality in Tourism’ Pets Welcome accreditation by VisitEngland! This means that we meet all the right criteria for our floating holiday cottages to be fun and safe for dogs. That includes providing water and food bowls, refrigeration facilities and other dog-centric items, as well as displaying useful information such as the location of local vets and all night chemists. You can find out more about the criteria for this accreditation on our Woodfarm Barns website here.

Both our barges are rigorously cleaned before each new set of guests arrived, so that you and your furry friends can enjoy your stay without any lingering canine smells or dirty paw prints. We know that aside from wishing to ensure our Barges and Cottages are spot on for humans, dogs, especially those on the nervous side, might get confused or agitated if there are obvious signs that another dog has been in its territory. This is why we try to make our barges look good as new for each guest. Plus, all our cleaning equipment and chemicals are pet-friendly.

While you’re staying with us, you’ll find plenty of great walks for you and your dog straight from your gangplank. Our Onderneming barge is based in Snape Maltings and our Twee Gebroeders barge is based in Woodbridge – both are beautiful rural locations with great scenery, fresh air and close proximity to walks of a variety of lengths. We even have a great selection of beaches for dogs to enjoy – some year round and some outside of summer months.

The towns and surrounding villages are also perfect for dog owners looking to go for a bite to eat with their pups. Whether you’re after a cosy pub atmosphere or a friendly cafe, many establishments around Suffolk allow dogs on the premises. And if you can’t find any that you like, simply pack up a picnic and take your dog to a local park for a bite to eat, al fresco.

If you would like to find out more about our dog-friendly features, visit this page to continue reading. We hope that you will consider staying with us, and if you do, please feel free to donate whatever change you can through our Blue Cross collection boxes to help animals all over Suffolk find better homes.