We’re pleased as punch to be working with the Historic Royal Palaces on a new collection – available now from our website and featured in our new catalogue – also available now.

So pleased, we’re giving away a “Welcome to the Palace” mat (worth £49.95) to the best post on our Facebook page, blog or via @Turtle_Mat on Twitter on how you’ll be celebrating the Royal Wedding (pics always welcome). Let us know how you’re marking the big day by Wednesday, 20th April to be in with a chance of winning!

Whether you’re organising a street party, going to a  knees-up in your wedding dress or will actually be at Westminster Abbey on the day we’d love to hear from you and you’ll be in with the chance of nabbing a Welcome to   the Palace! doormat to give you that “right royal” feeling.

Usual competition rules apply so take a deep breath and here we go…

Competition Rules

If you are the lucky winner of the competition, we will contact you via the email address/details accompanying your competition entry (used when commenting on the Turtle Mat blog, Facebook message or Twitter direct message) and ask for your full name and address in order to send you your prize.

Only the Turtle Mat Company Ltd. and companies working for the Turtle Mat Company Ltd. have access to your personal details and we do not share them with anybody else for their marketing purposes, without your permission to do so.

1. You must provide the Turtle Mat Company Ltd. with the required details (as above)  if you wish to enter this competition. The Turtle Mat Company Ltd. (or companies working for the Turtle Mat Company Ltd.) will use your personal details for the purposes outlined above and as outlined in our Privacy Policy

2. The competition closes at midnight on Wednesday, 20th April 2011. The prize winner will be notified by The Turtle Mat Company Ltd. on Thursday, 21st April 2011, at the email address/details supplied when entering the competition (see above).

3. Entries must be submitted by commenting on the Turtle Mat blog “Welcome to the Palace” or by responding via Turtle Mat Twitter or Facebook pages. Entries submitted by any other method will not be accepted.

4. Unless otherwise stated, competitions are only open to UK residents over the age of 18 at the closing date. The Turtle Mat Company Ltd. reserves the right to request proof of age.

5. Your competition submission must be your own work and its originality will be taken into account by the judges. By entering this competition you agree to grant The Turtle Mat Company Ltd. the right to publish and use your entry in all media for all purposes in connection with the competition. The Turtle Mat Company’s decision as to the winner is final. No correspondence relating to the competition will be entered into.

6. The competition winner will be contacted personally. In the event of their being no reply from the contact details (email address) supplied by the winning entrant The Turtle Mat Company Ltd. reserves the right to offer the prize to a runner up or withhold it for use in another competition.

7. Prizes must be taken as stated and cannot be deferred. There will be no cash alternatives.

8. The Turtle Mat Company Ltd. does not accept any responsibility for late or lost entries.

9. Entrants must comply with all rules to be eligible for the prize. Ineligible entries or entries made fraudulently will be automatically disqualified.

10. This competition is not open to employees of the Turtle Mat Company Ltd. or any person directly or indirectly involved in the organisation of or running of the competition, or their direct family members.

11. The Turtle Mat Company’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

12. The Turtle Mat Company Ltd. reserves the right to cancel the competition at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion, and if circumstances arise outside of its control.

13. Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and to agree to be bound by them when entering this competition. Entrants may be asked to take part in post competition publicity.

14. No purchase necessary.

15. This agreement is governed by the laws of England and Wales.

16. This competition is administered by the Turtle Mat Company Ltd.



Firstly, thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our first customer survey; it’s always great to hear from you and “Turtle Towers” has certainly been a buzz with some of your suggestions on how we can make things even better.

So, what’s the plan… lots of you told us “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” so we won’t be re-inventing ourselves a la Madonna, that’s for sure. However, there were some stand-out things you asked for which would make shopping with us more enjoyable or our range better suited to you.

So, thank you Paul Clark, Dawn Seddon and Lynne Addison for suggesting that we give you the option to see different sizes grouped together on our website – hopefully you will notice the change in the next few months, so you can jump straight into seeing all the mats we have available at the size you want. Judy Barham, I hope the newly launched Micro Mats fulfill your need for smaller sizes too.

Lots of you wanted new designs and I am happy to say there will be some fresh faces for autumn/winter 2010, with more to follow in the spring. Keep checking the blog to find out more, as we may well post a sneak peek of some of the new designs here first.

Finally, congratulations to Sue Boxall from Camberley who won our survey responders’ prize draw for a National Trust day pass and free cream tea – we hope you have a great day out!

Sssshhhhh, we’ve been keeping a little bit of a secret here at Turtle Towers but now we’d like to share it with you. We’d like to introduce you to the newest addition to our Turtle Mat Classic Collection, the small but incredibly mighty “Micro” Mat…..isn’t it a beauty!

The “Micro” Mat measures 37x50cm the perfect size for all sorts of situations and locations. Here’s just a few:

• Festival/camping essential to keep tents mud free – the perfect “glam-ping” accessory

• Caravanning – perfect doorway size, because Turtle Mats deserve   a holiday too!

• Pet mats – for food and drink bowls

• Kneeling mats – appealing to the gardener in us to avoid muddy knees

• Car foot-well mats

So go take a peek (you can nip straight there by clicking on the picture) and now for the best bit….they’re only £14.95 each and until the end of July we’re offering free postage* when you quote offer code MM88.

* free delivery offer is available to UK mainland addresses only, postage saving for Micro Mat orders is £4.95, postage saving for Micro Mat orders with Turtle Vac is £7.50.

It seems to happen every year, Father’s Day has snuck up upon us once again and discussion here at Turtle Towers has turned to “what gift should I get my dad?”.

It may not be the same for you (you lucky things), but over the years I have pleaded with, pestered and cajoled my inscrutable father to reveal what he would like most to mark the day, all to no avail! I have however developed a secret weapon to get round this pernickety-ness (some might say obstinacy), and it’s covered by one word…sport!

Well not just any sport, football and tennis to be more precise and for once timing could not be more perfect with the World Cup upon us and Wimbledon just around the corner. I can picture my dad reclining on the sofa and smiling with glee as England do battle in the qualifiers or as Murray strikes another winning return (mum meanwhile has suddenly found something very interesting to do in the garden). I know without fail a gift along these lines will illicit a similar response – job done.

My grandfather however is a different story, he makes taciturn an art-form, so it came as little surprise when my father ended our telephone chat last week with the immortal words “what gift should I get my dad?”  Oh, how the worm has turned!

I will admit I pondered whether to answer as enigmatically and frustatingly as he always does but the truth is I had the perfect present in mind. My granddad, you see, has his own magic word…trains!

No sooner said then are two Flying Scotsman Turtle Mats winging (sorry I couldn’t help myself) their way to my granddad to adorn his loft. Not the normal place for a Turtle Mat you might think but then my grandfather’s attic is anything but normal – it is in fact a giant model railway set, resplendent with stations and shrubbery, passengers and platforms, tunnels and the obligatory sheep on the hillside….ever the rail enthusiast.

The moral of this somewhat rambling tale is that the magic word isn’t always please. Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s planes, trains or World Cup fever.

Up until Father’s Day (20^th June 2010) we will be offering the Flying Scotsman mats at £34.97, a discount of 30% – order by Sunday so you don’t get left on the platform!

There has been a bit of debate at “Turtle Towers” this week about British-ness; perhaps it’s the feverish electoral cries of “broken Britain” that have got us mulling this over but the one thing we can all agree typifies British-ness is the slightly barmy things we do when the sun comes out.

Not only do we have a propensity to fling clothes (and modesty) to the wind when the weather sneaks above 18^oC but we also seem to believe ourselves imbued with superhuman powers as soon as the days lengthen (I like to call this May madness). What other explanation could there be for flinging yourself down a hill after a cheese (unless you were very, very hungry) or seeing shin-kicking as sport. We are lucky enough that “Turtle Towers” is nestled in the Cotswolds and it seems (whether by accident or design I wouldn’t like to speculate) to be the epicentre of quite a lot of the “crazy” and we love it.

Heading out towards Gloucester at Coopers Hill we have the now infamous cheese rolling (which will be missed this year) on the spring bank holiday. I was lucky enough to be there last year, right at the top jostling for position with the German and American TV crews and could only marvel at the recklessness that leads men and women to hurl themselves down that hill into the waiting arms of the local rugby team.

Even closer to us are the Tetbury Wool Sack Races also on the bank holiday weekend at the end of May, where teams and individuals carry 60lb wool sacks up a 1 in 4 gradient hill – this is Tetbury’s idea of a race; a tradition arising from rivalry between the two local pubs The Crown and The Royal Oak. I shall be attending this year, for the first year, come rain or shine so will hopefully have some pictures to add to this and later blogs.

Finally, an event I attended for the first time last year (and will attend again this year) Robert Dover’s Olimpick Games on 4^thJune, where the self-explanatory shin-kicking competition takes place. Villagers and tourists alike venture to a field just outside Chipping Campden to see all sorts of events, most notably competitors kicking each other’s shins (ouch). The culmination of this fabulous evening is a firework display and a torchlight walk back into the heart of Chipping Campden where a band entertains the assembled crowd.

The greatest thing about these events (aside from the camaraderie of wincing at someone falling down a hill or cracking their shin) we believe is their support of rural traditions, practices and businesses; whether this be Smarts Farm of Churcham Gloucestershire, the makers of the much chased Double Gloucester or the Tetbury and Chipping Campden pubs which benefit from increased trade.

Makes me proud that I as well as Turtle Mats are “Made in Britain”.

We are passionate about wildlife and not just our feathered friends in the “Turtle Towers” garden; we believe marine conversation is an important and often overlooked area too.

Following the recent explosion and subsequent sinking of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, marine conservation and the impact this event will have on marine life has come to the fore; as there is increasing concern about both the short and long-term damage the continuing spill of oil will have on the area’s wildlife.

Figures from the Marine Conservation Society show that well over 30 turtles have already washed up dead along the Mississippi coast after eating food contaminated by oil.

Sea turtle species are highly vulnerable to events such as this and with important nesting beaches along the coastline, the impact is felt even more keenly.

So what can we do? As you may have spotted in our catalogues, we have been supporting the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) for a number of years, specifically in their vital work to save marine turtles from extinction and now could not be a better time to get involved too.

This Sunday is World Turtle Day and one key way to make a difference is to Adopt a Turtle with the MCS – with only 1 in 1,000 baby turtles making it to adulthood in some parts of the world, due to various factors including the black market trade in turtle eggs and destruction of habitats your support can make a real difference.

Visit http://www.mcsuk.org/ to find out more about the great work the Marine Conservation Society does both here and abroad and how you can get involved.

Adopt a turtle for World Turtle Day with the MCS - http://www.mcsuk.org/support_mcs/Join Donate Adopt/Adopt a turtle/Adopt a turtle

Well, spring has definitely sprung since our last spring watch update, with one of the driest and sunniest Aprils we can remember – the sunglasses and flip flops have already made an appearance! In fact we’ve sprung so far we’re almost in summer.

No longer is spring hiding its modesty behind early morning frosts and hazy showers, now it is out in all its splendor; our gardens and their visitors are testament to that.  We have an abundance of colour from poeticus daffodils proudly and fragrantly showing us their wares to the blossom in its final farewell for the year, leaving in its wake a confetti-like trail of petals.

Our “Turtle Towers” visitors are still setting up camp around our feeders. We have desperately been trying to snap a few shots of our resident yellow hammer but he seems to be a little camera shy! The Jackdaws in all their foreboding menace are however strutting around the feeders like Mike Jagger at his finest and have been since about the beginning of the month. Also spotted: finches, sparrows and tits. No return however of the woodpecker.

Of course, how could we forget April also means spiders – whether you love them or loathe them you’ll find them basking on some sunny wall. When dealing with our eight-legged friends we tend to follow the old English rhyme:

“If you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive.”

We’ve been propagating like crazy– white Black Eyed Susan (Thunbergia alata Alba) for which we are having mixed success with only 50% germinating, the ubiquitous sweet peas, Cosmos and other annuals; as well as veg a plenty.

Finally, there’s some rain forecast for this weekend (typically just in time for the bank holiday!) so if you plan to be out in the garden come rain or shine like us, then don’t forget your Turtle Mat at the back door for those muddy wellies!

In the final part of our “baking odyssey” to celebrate the launch of our new spring/summer 2010 catalogue we thought we would share with you a slightly unusual (but still scrumptious) cupcake recipe as well as offer you the chance to win your own Cupcake. Thankfully, we are not giving away one of our culinary creations but one Cupcake Turtle Mat worth £44.95

To be in with a chance of winning the ‘Cupcake’ just post your own original cupcake recipe or flavour combination as a comment on this blog. The entry we here at the Turtle Mat Company consider our favourite will win one Cupcake Turtle Mat worth £44.95. Competition rules apply (see below).

(more…)

Expanding our culinary abilities (as well as our waist lines) here at Turtle Mat, here is another cupcake recipe or two to celebrate the launch of our new spring 2010 catalogue with its “cupcake-y” cover. (more…)

…May not keep the doctor away but definitely keeps a smile on our faces here at “Turtle Towers”.

To celebrate the launch of our new Turtle Mat spring 2010 catalogue, with its kitchen inspired cover, we have been baking up a storm and thought we’d share with you over the week some of our favourite cupcake recipes.

As always, we would love to hear from you whether it be with recipes, pictures of your baking successes (or disasters), comments on how your Turtle Mats help catch culinary spills (they definitely helped when road-testing these recipes) or any other thoughts.

Finally, keep an eye on the blog over the coming few weeks for a competition to win our new catalogue cover mat – “Cupcake”. So without further ado, here’s the first scrumptious recipe.

Magnolia Bakery’s red velvet cupcakes (with Turtle Mat tweaks) with vanilla cream cheese frosting (more…)