We are celebrating our 5th Anniversary. It makes me nostalgic!

We have been celebrating our 5th birthday this weekend and were delighted on Friday to share a glass of ‘Prosecco’ with both our arriving guests as well as the Cherry Lakes team pictured below.

The last 5 years have gone amazingly quickly since we opened the original 4 Lodges (Heron, Osprey and Grebe on Cherry Lake and Kingfisher Lodge on Cherry Springs) in May 2013. We like to think we have been successful in creating one of the UK’s premier Carp fishing holiday venues. One thing is for sure is that it would not have been possible without the support of our guests, many of whom have become regular visitors and friends to Judith, Dave and myself. We would like to thank everybody who has visited Cherry Lakes over these five years and we hope to see you all again over the next five years!

Running a small business like this would not be possible without our team here at Cherry Lakes. Our team of house keepers (Lisa, Nadia and Rhian) and our cleaners (Eco-Klean) do an amazing job of ensuring the Lodges and Cottage are always well turned out despite the fact they only have 3 hours to turn them all around on a Monday and Friday. A special thanks to Tania and Chris (not pictured) who have been our cleaners since the beginning.

Our fishery manager Dave Bowen has also been with us from the very beginning, including during a very busy 2012 when we put in place our Otter Fencing, and much of the basic infrastructure needed before we could commence building the Lodges. He is a superstar who not only loves the place as much as we do, but he also manages the business for us when we go on holiday including moving into our house and cleaning up after our dogs! Thanks so much Dave, we could not have done it without you.

Looking back over the last 5 years or so has made me feel very nostalgic. Looking back the most interesting project was the creation of Cherry Lake, So I thought I would share with you four photos to give you a snap-shot of how Cherry Lake was re-created our of an old quite heavily silted and pretty featureless gravel pit. See below

This first shot shows the posts for the decking on Heron Lodge. In the background you can see a recently drained Cherry Lake. The thick layers of almost liquid silt being covered by mountains of weed. The core drainage trench around the lake had already been dug. Other than this trench it was essentially flat and feature less.

We were so surprised by how much silt there was. The only way forward was to capture it all in several key areas with the added advantage of creating some great features. It was fascinating watching the machines push tonnes and tonnes of silt behind the sand/gravel bar which is largely now in the water of Grebe Lodge. The smell was horrible!

This shot from Osprey Lodge shows sand bar which rise some 4 feet from the normal lake bed. As you might be able to make it, the area behind is now completely full of silt. We had stopped pumping the water at this stage which was steadily returning. It is a shot which though does show the additional ‘plateau’ features which now exist in both Osprey and Grebe Lodge’s water.

My final shot below is a repeat view from Heron Lodge, which was taken some two weeks or so after the original one above in December 2012. The concrete platform for Heron Lodge is rather dull. What is interesting to see is how much the lake had been cleaned up and re-freshed and how many ‘fishy features had been added. Fishery manager Dave and I had great fun standing in the bottom of the lake designing our own lake. A real Carp fishers dream!

Thank you again for visiting and your interest in Cherry Lakes.