“A view, a brew and a loo”...

At the height of summer, people need little more than an optimistic weather forecast to attract them to Hurlmere in hordes. They’ll put up, uncomplainingly, with bad food, over-priced accommodation and surly landlords, until their pockets are empty and they have to go back home again. Their needs are few: just “a view, a brew and a loo”, as Brenda acknowledges, in one of her more cynical moments.

If we want to keep the visitors coming all year round, we have to be a bit more imaginative. It’s Brenda’s job, as Hurlmere’s Tourism Officer, to dream up new ideas that will keep visitors coming out of season. There’s been no shortage of ideas, over the years, for opening up the clenched fists of visitors and prising a few coppers out, just a shortage of good ideas.

There was the Running of the Sheep, inspired by a holiday Brenda had taken in Pamploma. With Book Burning Day she tried to revive a fine old tradition that had rather fallen out of favour since the collapse of the Third Reich. When foot and mouth closed all the footpaths five years ago, and transformed the Lakeland landscape into a charnel house from Hell, Brenda tried to persuade seasoned walkers to stay off the fells. She created, instead, a ‘town trail’ that stuck resolutely to Tarmac, and guided walkers around some of Hurlmere’s many attractions.

Starting, sensibly enough, from the pay & display car-park, the Hurlmere Trail visited the cricket pitch (‘The scene of many epic performances. Usually by the opposition’), the duckpond (‘It attracts many species of ducks. Mallards mostly’) and the office of the Hurlmere Echo (‘Interesting, no doubt, to those who want to watch a large man in a swivel chair eating cake’). Walkers were warned to keep clear of the Grievous Bodily Arms, for good Health & Safety reasons. You can’t be too careful...