It is with great joy I can report that the building work at Brompton Lakes is now complete! As much as I have grown fond of all the guys working on site, it is wonderful to come into work every morning and not see the dreaded white vans everywhere. After 18 months of hard work we now have 20 lodges completed, slightly ahead of schedule.
All that remains to be done is furnishing the last 5 lodges, most of which is done already and then we can complete the photography for the website. I was slightly apprehensive about Percy and Jules, as these two lodges are set back from the lake rather than on the water’s edge but they actually look fine and have a unique character of their own. The landscaping is also complete although it will take a while for the new planting to fully take hold. Whilst we have mostly put in mature trees and shrubs it will be a few years before it all looks fully established.
Having taken advantage of a bright interlude in the rather dull weather to have a really good look around yesterday afternoon, I was really taken back by how well things have come together over the last few weeks. Having seen the development coming together an inch at a time over the last couple of years it’s easy to forget how much has been achieved in a relatively short space of time.
The focus of our attention now is to fine tune the running of the business and get things operating as smoothly as possible. Having effectively started from scratch earlier this year, and not having much experience of the holiday let business we have had to learn on our feet. However, despite a few minor glitches things have generally gone well and our customer seem more than happy, several have already been back for return visits and many have booked to come again next year.
Bookings for the festive season are going well with only the odd night or two left, and we have had to decline dozens of people for New Year, regrettably. Reservations for 2010 are picking up really well now and there is every reason to suspect we are going to be pretty busy!
