A COUPLE are celebrating after opening their first restaurant following 12 months of hard work.

The team at Heft have officially opened the doors with bookings now live for both lunch and dinner.

The Inn, the first venture from Cumbrian husband and wife, Kevin and Nicola Tickle, has undergone a significant year-long refurbishment programme.

Excited for the venture and what’s to come Nicola said: “It has been a long time coming to finally open, but we are excited to see the business get off the ground.

“We originally started the adventure in 2019 when we bought the building and starting renovating but then Covid happened and we had to postpone it.

“We were gutted but in the end it was a blessing in disguise – it allowed us to become more organised and not rush the process, allowing everything to be perfect and looking and feeling exactly how we imagined.”

The former 17th century coaching inn now boasts a contemporary bar serving quality beers and carefully selected wines, and a 28 cover fine-dining restaurant serving up chef patron Kevin’s take on modern British food, using a wealth of locally reared and farmed produce in his dishes.

Nicola, who has previously worked as front of house staff, said: “Kevin has been a chef since he left school and I’ve done a lot of front of house work and we thought why don’t we start our own restaurant and work for ourselves.

“This has allowed us to become flexible as we now have a family so we can work around that also.”

The couple have two children, Elsie, five, and Rory, one.

The inn is to commence further work in the coming months which will see the addition of five guest rooms, created with local interior design house Inkwood Interiors, with bespoke fabrics from the likes of Cumbria’s Cabbage & Curtain Rail.

Nicola said the Inn and restaurant represents somewhere she and her husband would want to eat and dine at on their days off. She said: “We wanted to create somewhere we’d want to visit - which is ironic really as we will be running it.”