In a world of luxury spas, huge HD LED flat screen TVs in every room and champagne on tap, the Hazel Bank Country House prides itself on something a little different - genuine hospitality.
It’s a recipe which has worked well for Gary and Donna MacRae since they took on the seven-bedroom country house hotel in the Borrowdale Valley. “We do not want to be known as a boutique hotel, we are a classic country house where guests can really get away from it all. Don`t get me wrong, we have smart TVs in every room as standard, we just don`t advertise it,” says Gary. “We say to people, we have a spa and it’s called Derwentwater. We have a gym and it’s called Great Gable!”
It’s 11 years since they bought the business and their occupancy rates have soared. Before Covid they operated on 96 per cent occupancy all year round with 80 per cent repeat visitors. Their customers’ average stay is 4.2 days with many returning two or three times every year. Over the years the business has won many awards, including an AA 5* gold accommodation award and two further major ones in the past 12 months: The Good Hotel Guide’s Best Hotel in the North of England and the Conde Nast Johansen Best Small and Exclusive Hotel in the UK.
Gary and Donna have owned and operated Borrowdale businesses for more than 30 years. Donna was born in the valley and they were both pupils at Laithwaite School in Keswick before Gary did an engineering degree in Workington.
“I never wanted to leave Cumbria,” he says.
Their families are Cumbrian through and through – Gary’s mum was a dinner lady and his dad, a butcher.
Donna’s dad was a miner at Honister and her mum, Rachel Weir Dunckley, has had a guesthouse in nearby Stonethwaite for decades.
In 1991, when Gary was working as a director of Four Seasons Foods (now owned by Caterite), they heard the Langstrath Hotel in Stonethwaite, which had been empty for a few years, was for sale.
“We were trying to make ends meet and the hotel came up by chance. Donna had been working as a nanny for the movie director Ken Russell. Neither of us were trained in hospitality but we wanted to do something different. It was the last years of the Thatcher era and interest rates were ridiculously high, around 14 per cent. We were talking about £150 to £160,000 for a hotel. I thought, ‘let’s give it a go’. We got a bank loan at a time when you went for an interview, sold yourself to the bank manager and convinced him you could make it work.
“We started there and had a mammoth task in getting it off the ground. People bought into our story… we went from nothing to 130 meals a night,” says Gary.
At the time Donna was doing all the cooking. “She’s been awarded two AA rosettes now,” says Gary. “But it’s taken 30 years!” He’s referring to the cooking she does alongside current local chef Earl Aggrey at the Hazel Bank, which they purchased after selling the Langstrath.
“Working at the Langstrath had taken its toll, we had four children by then and we were working at a real intensity, closing only for Christmas Day… our life wasn’t our own,” says Gary. They sold it in 2006 as a going concern and bought ‘Deer Close’, a derelict property near Walla Crag to turn into a holiday rental.
As Gary says, it wasn’t enough. So they bought a café in Keswick, The Wild Strawberry, to run alongside. But Gary says they were still missing the hotel routine and hospitality.
“We had been offered this place (Hazel Bank) by numerous owners in the past but I’d always thought I didn’t want a fancy bed and breakfast while I was a young man pulling pints at the Langstrath Country Inn. I didn’t consider myself old enough to look after this type of business and do B&B. We looked at buying Hazel Bank as a house, keep the coffee shop and maybe do a bit of B&B if needed. But once we came through the door we fell in love with the place, the tremendous setting and stunning views, it had a lot going for it. We realised it had to be reignited and we, being local, were the couple to do it. We took it on and set about a programme of refurbishment. We were bringing it back to its former glory.
The couple spent about £300,000 refurbishing the place, including installing a biomass boiler enhancing the hotel’s green accreditation. To increase bookings they decided to start taking one-night bookings and used online travel agents. Once trade picked up they changed it to two-night bookings, which remains to this day. “We don’t accept dogs or children and most of our guests, including ourselves, have both at home! We know exactly what people want from a break,” Gary says.
Every night they cook a four-course meal for the guests. “It’s like a dinner party every night,” he says. “In my view it’s all about the hospitality.” A team of five, including Gary and Donna, run the place. Donna does all the cooking when the chef is off and Gary is in charge of hospitality as well as managing the four acres of gardens, with its red squirrels, bats, newts, badgers and deer.
“What we have found this year in particular there seems to be a lot more uncertainty with people who want to visit. Even in our demographic, which is between 40 and 80 years old, people who have been coming to Borrowdale all their lives and have fallen in love with it have more commitments, cost of living and all the rest of it. This year there are a lot more people leaving it late to book, not sure about interest rates, energy bills, mortgage rates, etc,” he says.
“But we are getting new customers who are finding it for the first time, people in their 30s who like the idea that we have canapes in the lounge at 7pm. We are bringing people together, not like other places where all the conveniences are put in the bedrooms. By doing that a lot of bigger hotels keep people away from the public areas so it doesn’t need much manning. I believe in bringing people together, that’s hospitality to me,” says Gary.
“The prime importance for me is for people to enjoy the Lake District,” he says. “One of the things a lot of my guests comment on when they’ve been out in Cumbria is the poor levels of service.”
He says the valley is also slowly losing its identity, with bigger businesses buying up the independent places which become available.
“I think some of these places are becoming impersonal,” he says. “You want to immerse people in he beauty of the area and what it has to offer. Where it’s changing is that the fingers of commerciality are reaching into the rural fabric of the place and almost pulling out the thing that has brought people here for years.”
Despite his energy, Gary, 64, was diagnosed with colon cancer during the pandemic. “I have made decisions I never thought I would have to make,” he says, although he and Donna have no plans to retire.
“We are a Borrowdale story,” he says, and it’s a valley they want to share.
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