It’s sloe gin making season and we would love to hear about your favourite sloe gin recipes, sloe picking tips and gin related stories, preferably with accompanying photographs!

Go to our Facebook page (you can click on the F logo), Like, Share and post your Comment by midday Friday 18th December to be in with a chance to win a bottle of delicious, 5 star rated Conker Spirit Dry Gin ( www.conkerspirit.co.uk ) from Dorset’s first gin distillery.

Whatever one’s view on shooting may be, there is no doubt that it is an integral part of country life and much of the beautiful English countryside has been shaped and landscaped over the years with the management of game in mind. Shooting is important to the rural economy, providing income and employment whilst for many it is also intrinsic to the cultural and social fabric of rural life.

Whilst the origins of hunting, shooting and fishing was all about providing food for the table, this is of course not it’s primary purpose although the ‘produce’ resulting from these activities is still highly appreciated. As has been the case for centuries, the means of achieving the end, is what it’s all about.

In Wiltshire and its neighbouring counties there are several large commercial, run for profit, estate shoots employing specialist gamekeepers and attracting the rich and famous from around the World, some of whom have ended up buying country properties with shoots or rural homes which are close to good shooting. A couple of A List stars come to mind who have bought homes in recent years near our Tisbury based office for this reason.

In contrast, for many farmers and landowners, shooting is carried out on a more informal basis, perhaps with a syndicate of friends putting down a few birds every year for a bit of social sport. Alternatively for some, shooting could just be one man and his dog bagging a rabbit or a brace of pigeon for the supper pot.

The creature most often associated with shooting is of course the common pheasant. The handsome iridescent autumn colours of the cock bird are seen everywhere in the country, frequently squashed on our lanes! Roughly 35 million birds are released each year of which around 15 million end up being shot. Grey partridge at one time were the most popular sporting quarry but their numbers have plummeted since the introduction of farming herbicides in the 1950’s which led to the disappearance of weeds inhabited by the insects that they relied on for their diet.

Shot in lesser numbers are waterfowl, mainly ducks (usually mallard) but also woodcock and snipe whilst grouse shooting is a more exclusive sport limited to the moors of Scotland and Northern England.

The game shooting season controls when in the United Kingdom shooting is permitted and depends on the type of species being hunted with slight regional variations. The pheasant shooting season is from the 1st October to February 1st, whilst the shooting of partridge starts a month earlier but finishes at the same time. Probably one the most famous dates on the calendar is the 12th August, the start of the red grouse season and known as the Glorious Twelfth, it ends on the 10th December.

When it comes to mammals, rabbits and hare can be shot throughout the year except on moorland or unenclosed land whilst the shooting of deer depends on the variety and whether the animal is a stag or hind. Although not common in our part of Wessex, there is no close season currently for wild boar although best practice recommends avoiding killing a sow with dependent offspring.
Whether you shoot or not, Rural View are established specialists in the sale, letting and management of country, village and market town property and can be contacted on 01722 716895.

Walking up and down Castle Street in the otherwise lovely historic cathedral city of Salisbury, Wiltshire is surely one of the most soulless experiences with the complete dominance of estate agency offices and this comes from someone who is an estate agent himself! Napoleon once famously described Britain as being a nation of shop keepers, now it seems we are a nation of estate agents!

One could easily be forgiven for thinking that there are more estate agents in Salisbury than properties to sell, indeed, there is some truth in this. Despite the severe recession in the housing market over the last decade, the numbers have grown even though there are fewer homes available to sell now than there were ten years ago. Every other shop in the city seems to be either an estate agency or coffee house!

So do we actually need so many estate agents in our city and town centres? The answer is surely no. Not only is there currently not enough business to go round so many firms but the reality is that properties are no longer bought and sold in estate agents’ offices the way they used to be. It is the internet that is now the property World’s shop window.

With the surge in the use of handheld devices such as tablets and smart phones over the last four or five years and the continuing popularity of personal computers and lap tops, whatever ‘product’ one is marketing, the internet has undoubtedly become king. As an illustration of this, the UK’s leading property portal Rightmove, one of the country’s most visited websites, 500 pages are viewed every second.

Logging onto a property website is the way the overwhelming majority of house buyers search for their next home. This has led to a number of on-line only agencies being set up. With lower overheads by not having high street rents to pay for and fewer staff to employ, they can offer sellers discounted fees, allowing home owners to post their properties on the internet cheaply. This might sound great but the reality is often far from it and vendors need to be aware that some sites refuse to post properties marketed by on-line agents.

There are other disadvantages with on-line agents not least of which is a call centre style of service. Some offer a dedicated contact albeit with an individual who is likely to have limited knowledge of the property itself, it’s setting and the immediate surroundings. If the remote agent is based in say Basingstoke, they will not know about the local schools, pubs, shops, walks etc. in a village in the Wylye Valley.

On-line agents’ marketing material usually has much to be desired with owners often being left to provide their own photographs and descriptions. I have seen some quite appalling property details which are poorly presented, misleading and more likely to put off prospective buyers than entice them. The seller will also have to conduct their own viewings and have limited support in the offer, negotiation and sales process.

So is there room for a hybrid, i.e. an agency that provides a traditional hands-on, personal intermediary service away from the high street but providing both global and local marketing using the World Wide Web and other digital platforms such as social media? Certainly and it is very much what smaller, non-corporate firms like Rural View are about.

We have found that sellers and buyers alike prefer to develop a good working relationship with ‘real’ people who have an intimate knowledge of the area, the local property market and understand their needs and expectations. Oh, and we do have an office where visitors are most welcome, it’s just that it’s in a complex of converted farm buildings and not on Castle Street, Salisbury!