This week’s easing of the Covid restrictions will hopefully bring a boost to the local economy.

From Monday shops, gyms and hairdressers have been able to reopen and hospitality venues such as pubs can offer outdoor service.

This is all welcome but there is still a necessary air of caution and guidelines to be followed.

Meanwhile, the lights are getting longer, the days brighter (let’s forget last weekend’s snow flurries!), spring flowers are blooming and lambs are everywhere in the lower fields.

There is also plenty of news to be positive about in this area.

Lakeland Arts has received more than £400,000 from the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund to help them to continue to care for their venues and collections and to reopen their sites.

The Windermere Jetty Museum café opened this week and Blackwell - the Arts and Crafts House near Bowness and the Windermere Jetty Museum will open later this spring.

Rydal Mount, where poet William Wordsworth spent part of his life, has been awarded more than £30,000 from the same fund. It will be used to make a number of improvements ahead of its scheduled reopening on May 17, including to access and ventilation and for new furniture for the tearoom.

Meanwhile, the Westmorland Family is celebrating after three of its service stations took the top spots in a survey conducted by consumer champion Which?

Tebay Service Station, which always strikes me as standing out from most other motorway stopping places, came second out of almost 700 service stations and was praised for its freshly-prepared food, which is on offer in the kitchen and for sale in the onsite farm shop.

Tebay was joined in the top three by the company’s Gloucester Services and Cairn Lodge Services.

Tea and coffee merchants John Farrer & Co featured on Channel 4’s Food Unwrapped programme on Friday, as sales manager Brian Williams showed Dr Helen Lawal how to create a perfect espresso and explained the importance of ‘crema’ when it comes to crafting the perfect drink. What great national exposure for this Kendal-based store.

And Ambleside was among the most searched for areas in the UK, a new study revealed. It came in at number 17 on the list of towns and villages with a population under 20,000 in data compiled by a holiday rental search engine.