Who we are
Jackie Coulthard - housekeeper
Jackie lives nearby and has a team of highly professional staff who clean holiday houses in Keswick every week, sometimes twice a week, for the many guests who stay with us. She's great at organising treats like biscuits and wine for when people arrive, and gets upset with anyone who doesn't treat the house with love and care. You'll find her walking her dog of an evening over the beautiful fields outside Penrith.
Colin Smith - caretaker
Colin is the ultimate Mr-Fix-it. If you run into any problems during your stay (we hope you won't!) Colin is the man on the end of the phone. Before we renovated the house we had a bad winter and the old pipes didn't survive a particularly cold patch. Colin was there at midnight with buckets and Britsh Gas call-out details. When you're not on the phone to him, Colin will be on with his latest building project at home and spending time with his family in Cockermouth.
Diane Cannon - gardener
Diane is a well known local landscape gardener, and we have been lucky enough to have her support at all of our Keswick houses for some years now. She produces beautiful plants with names we can't pronounce and tends to them lovingly through the winter rains as well as the summer droughts, so our patios always look lovely. She and her family live in Keswick, and she can often be found running up the mountainsides at a rapid pace, leaving the rest of us far behind.
Maria Burton - photographer
Maria is a reknowned local professional photographer with an extraordinary ability to get others as enthusiastic as she is about capturing the incredibly beautiful Cumbrian scenery on camera. As well as taking photographs for a multitude of local businesses like ours, Maria runs magical half-day / full-day or multi-day photography sessions with everyone from the investigative beginner to the aspiring pro. She will run groups around the district in her dedicated, photographic-equipment-filled car and expose the secrets of taking and editing wonderful photographs. Her website www.lake-district-light.com will whet your appetite to venture out with her during your stay at Number Twenty.
Sheena and her team in Carlisle
Cumbrian Cottages have an eager team of advisors in Carlisle who take bookings for a large number of houses in Cumbria and beyond. Sheena has looked after Number Twenty and its sister houses (Denholm and Kylesku, the former sadly no longer ours...) since we first took them on just after the turn of the millenium.
Penny and Paul Mitchell
We bought a house in Keswick when we were living in a small flat in London and didn't have any prospect of moving anywhere bigger with our young family. The house in Keswick seemed like a good compromise - somewhere we could get out of the city for a few holidays, whilst covering some of the costs by renting it out to others. Over time we have spread our wings and and are slowly expanding our holiday rentals business. We'd happily spend months in Keswick roaming around the mountains, but for the moment work and family commitments keep us away for longer than we'd like.
