In 2013 we decided to focus all our efforts on the holidays and shut the gallery and for 2014 we announced further changes including another name change as we no longer needed that link with Cheddar and in fact with holidays in many more locations it no longer seemed relevant to have Cheddar in the name, so we made the following press release :-
It’s All in the Name: Cheddar Painting Holidays started in Cheddar but we have grown far beyond Cheddar and thought that our name did not fully reflect what we now do. Therefore, we felt it was time to change our name to something that was all encompassing of all our holiday destinations both now and in the future plus was indicative of how we operate our holidays. We have always wanted to bring you a good standard of holiday with Britain’s top tutors staying in lovely hotels and thought that as everyone had “A Lovely Painting Holiday Adventure” with us there was only one name we could be and so we decided to change our name to Alpha Painting Holidays.
About Us
In 2007 - we opened Cheddar Gallery, with the view to promoting the
“Beauty of God’s Creation through Art & Photography”.
The Gallery was
“The First & Last Shop in Cheddar….for Art & Photography”.
We produced a leaflet explaining the purpose of the Gallery which you can have a look at as we still believe it to be true >>>
Once the shop was opened plans for running the painting holidays were started and the first painting holiday was run in June 2008 and we ran 6 holidays around the Cheddar area that year and Cheddar Gorge & Mendip Hills Painting Holidays was born.
From our very first until now we have always sought the feedback of our customers to ensure we are providing what you want from a holiday. Many times over the first two years people said that they loved the way we did things, the hotels, the tutors and their tuition and our organisation was the best they had experienced BUT that whilst they enjoyed Cheddar they wanted to be able to have a choice of holidays and paint some different scenes, so we ran our first holidays ‘away from home’ in 2011 in Lynmouth, North Devon and the Isle of Wight.
We then changed our name to Cheddar Painting Holidays as we could no longer reference the locations in the name but as we still had the Gallery we wanted to keep the identity of Cheddar and to not lose that link between our holidays and the Gallery.
Why Alpha?
Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and as such has become synonymous with the First & the Best.
We aim to be your First choice in a holiday as we strive to offer the Best Painting Holiday you could go on.
This is because we want everyone to have A Lovely Painting Holiday Adventure.
In addition the name Alpha or First goes back to the roots of where this all began with the shop which was the “First & Last” shop in Cheddar, as you can see below.
Over the years we have had many reviews and articles written about us as well as competitions and what we do. We have included them here for you to have a look for yourself.
Below is a brief summary of our history, how we started and how we got to where we are now and some changes that have happened on the way. As time goes on we intend to expand our offerings of holiday destinations to continue to provide you a variety of places to paint.
