Building and bookings continue to gather pace at Brompton!

Things continue to move along at quite a pace, over the past few months we have commissioned three more lodges, Cara, Juniper and Louis, taking the number of lodges available for letting to 10 with a further 4 lodges on the east lake under construction.

We have taken the decision to pull the building programme forward, due in part to the positive nature of the holiday market in the UK, but more specifically due to brisk business at Brompton Lakes. The feedback we are getting is encouraging with many customers having enjoyed their stay and promising to return. Lettings are gathering pace daily, over the Easter break demand exceeded supply for the first time and we had to turn down a number of enquiries. We are noticing the traditional holiday periods are selling out very quickly as more and more people get to know about us.

After what seemed like a winter with no end the weather has been fantastic since the end of February and as I write we are praying for rain, a new hobby in North Yorkshire! Having planted masses of trees, bushes and plants, and seeded acres of grass it refuses to rain making it difficult to get things greened up. Having said that the estate is now coming to life with trees in blossom, plants coming back to life and the many thousands of daffodils looking fantastic. We have finally moved the administration into the reception area which makes life easier for staff and visitors alike, Katey Perkiss is in the process of moving her family into the wardens lodge and the whole place is starting to feel more lived in. We have started building a tennis court and if BT would turn up to install the telephone system life would be almost perfect!
Without doubt the most satisfying aspect of the whole Brompton Lakes project is seeing what started as a building project turning into a community. People come here to relax and enjoy themselves, catch a few fish, go for a run, have a barbeque; It’s is quite wonderful to behold after all the hard work over the past year. Hopefully the best is yet to come!

Construction of the lodges began in June 2008, slowly at first as we were keen to treat the first two as prototypes, realising we may have to make small design changes to during the build process. Having laid concrete foundation pads and serviced the plots with necessary utilities; water, electric cables and sewerage, we were ready to start erecting the buildings.

This involved bringing in a huge crane to lift the glu-lam frames into place and then fit the timber frame panels and bolt everything together. Within two or three days we could have a basic building up with a waterproof membrane on the roof to keep out the weather. More about the fitting out later.

While the lodges were being built there were many other things to consider.
Two potentially very expensive issues were high on the agenda; water supplies and stone for roads and foundations. We had approached our local water utility company asking for a price to feed a water supply into the site but the quotation was of staggering proportions. We thought again and decided to take a chance on drilling a borehole as we had heard rumours of an underground lake in the area. We brought in a specialist drilling company and after a couple of days drilling...bingo! We had struck water, not only that but pure spring water under pressure!

We also suspected that there could be gravel under our field so we tasked Les our friendly ground works contractor to start digging and within a very short space of time he returned with a big grin on his face saying "I've hit gravel, masses of it". Within a week we had a grader and crusher on site and we were making our own stone and gravel on site. Sometimes you need a bit of good luck.

We had felled a number of trees around the site which were either surplus to requirements or rotten, so we brought in a log saw and splitter and set to work chopping up a huge mountain of wood which had been accumulating, the result was several years supply of logs all chopped to 330cm long so they would fit inside the hi tech log burning stoves soon to arrive from Switzerland. It is difficult to calculate just how many lorry journeys in and out we have saved through our self sufficiency bust it must be many hundreds.