In March this year Bruce Jackson, 43, paid £690,000 for the Dalegarth House Country Hotel, in Portinscale, Cumbria. It was a good return on the £16,000 mortgage he took out 27 years ago, when he began work as a commis chef at a nearby hotel. Since then Jackson and his wife, Pauline, have climbed the hospitality ladder and bought what they hope will be their final property.
Jackson was born just four miles away. In fact, he has never worked outside Cumbria. "I joke with the guests that I've never been out of the county in my life," he adds. But local knowledge and contacts have been an essential component of his success. "My brother's a farmer and his home-bred lamb is on the menu; we use my father-in-law's vegetables; and all jam is home-made. I bet plenty of chefs in London working 20-hour days would swap their jobs for this existence," he says.
After working his way up to head chef at 20, he found jobs at local hotels and restaurants before the couple married in 1987. They bought their first hotel the following year, the six-bedroom Glen Coe guesthouse in Keswick, for £60,000. Pauline ran it while he worked at the Yew Tree restaurant in nearby Seatoller. "The restaurant was two old houses that had been knocked through - one of which my late father had grown up in."
In 1994 they sold Glen Coe for £108,000 and bought the White Horse gastropub in Scales, near Keswick, for £195,000. "It was in the middle of nowhere," says Jackson. "The locals loved it, but we didn't. We were run ragged." They sold up in 1998.
Ten months later they bought the Allerdale House guesthouse in Keswick for £290,000, selling it six months ago for £420,000. "We could have bought a 30-bed hotel in Blackpool," he says, "but here we are surrounded by family and friends and enjoy a fantastic quality of life. Why would you turn your back on that?"