Charity Auctions - support a dog re-homing charity by bidding for our offers

Would you like to support a dog re-homing kennels and stay at the castle all as part of a good cause. If so visit www.tarag.co.uk and bookmark their site. They'll soon be holding a charity auction on some B&B stays and Self-catering stays at Craig y Nos Castle and at our self-catering Craig y Nos Farmhouse.

Here is a copy of the email exchange with what we offered. If you fancy a stay at the castle or a week in our farmhouse, you could bid on them at their charity auction.

Why are we so generous?  Well, we like supporting dog re-homing charities, plus of course we do get some advertising / publicity out of it, so it makes commercial sense. We will always consider donating dog breaks at the castle for charity auctions. If you know of any dog charity that could benefit from a similar offer, let us know, especially any involved in dog re-homing. Both of my dogs came from a dog's home, I see no purpose in buying from breeders when there are so many dogs that need a loving home and you hear of so many being put down.

The RSPCA incidentally are the worst for this, and do not merit ANY support - they're too interested in suing people, acting as if they were the police, even suing a hunt for fox hunting and losing £300k apparently - but I digress. It is the independent dog homing centres who have a policy of NOT putting healthy dogs down that I am very happy to support.

So here is our offer to www.tarag.co.uk

Hi Martin
We would like to thank you very much for your lovely offers and we are in the process of sorting advertisement out for you.

As soon as i know how long it will take to get you up on our website etc i will get back to you.

Thank you so very much from all of us here at www.tarag.co.uk

Warmest regards
Linzi x

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Martin Gover (Craig Y Nos Castle) <martin.gover@craigynoscastle.com> wrote:
Thank you for your email.

We are happy to offer you some prizes for an auction.

Since you obviously run more than one auction, you can use the following prizes for more than one auction.

Please can you place a prominent link somewhere on your main site to www.dogfriendlywales.com which is our main dog friendly B&B site for Craig y Nos Castle.

•         This may not be within your personal authority so please pass this email on to someone who can do this. Once I am emailed by someone your end with the linking URL, I will place a link on my site above, to your main site, should you like to have a reciprocal link.
•         Additionally I can also do a couple of paragraphs write up on my site about your site and service. For free, if you can do something on Craig y Nos Castle in return. Craig y Nos Castle’s niche dog site gets about 2,500 visitors a month – most of them finding us organically, as the site is generally found at top of google for ‘dog friendly B&B Wales’ and any other hotel or accommodation searches with ‘Wales’ in the search.

And now for some auction prizes

1.       One week self-catering break at Craig y Nos Farmhouse value £750. Conditions (i) must be taken in 2014 in either Feb, March, April or October November or December excluding Christmas and New Year’s weeks. (ii) Excludes summer period. 4 star self catering. Sleeps 6 or 8. (iii) Subject to availability.

See (and link to): http://www.selfcateringholidaycottageinwales.com   

Given the value of this we would only offer ONE of these a year. This one for 2014 year only.

It should be accompanied by some fairly major publicity on your part as it is a very good offer with high value in a good 4 star dog friendly self-catering farmhouse. In the event the farmhouse is not available for the preferred weeks, we can also offer a self-contained flat in the castle itself as an alternative, however this only sleeps 4 and has less space generally, being a small apartment rather than a large-ish farmhouse.

2.       Two night Mid-week B&B break at Craig y Nos Castle. For two. Value £150 (at ‘dog deal’ tariff, or £246 at regular midweek tariff) on the Dog Breaks deal.

Link to either http://www.dogfriendlywales.com or http://www.dogfriendlywales.com/castle-stay-deals.html   

We could repeat this offer more than once in a year, provided we get good links and PR for the castle as well.

Include the following conditions: (i) Must be taken in 2014. (ii) Offer is Subject to availability. (iii) Not generally available at weekends due to wedding bookings.

This offer should be advertised as a ‘mid-week break’ as it is primarily available midweek Sun to Thurs only and subject to availability. Some winter weekends are available however, if no wedding booked, and some combinations that include a Friday are available also where there is no wedding on the Friday. ALL Saturdays in 2014 except some in Jan and Feb (now almost over so our offer is probably too late for these months) have exclusive use weddings on and so are not available for this offer.

Stay may be extended to include additional days subject to availability at the regular tariff (£123 a night midweek, £143 weekends) if adding one night or if adding two further nights, the additional two days may be taken at the dog deal tariff of £150 for two midweek nights.

We have good feedback from dog owning guests as you will see should you check the site out and / or check Trip Advisor for, specifically, dog owning guests comments.

You will of course need to email me links to the URLs with the auction links on, and let me know the winner of each auction. If using (2) more than once, let me know each time, as we would not want to do too many in a year and I am not sure how many auctions you hold in a year.

Kind regards,

Martin Gover
Craig y Nos Castle.