The search had been long, arduous, often frustrating but, at last, elation. Hinning House seemed to have just about everything I was seeking, plus bonuses.

Cosseting tourists in the English Lake District was a trade I had decided to enter in the winter of 1981. Now it was October ’82. For close on a year I had hunted just about every corner of glorious Cumbria in my quest for the ideal property. Sheltered Eskdale, on the eastern shores of the Irish Sea, I already knew well but local agents had nothing on offer. Then a package from a national company landed on my doorstep and told of a converted farmhouse with ‘substantial outbuildings and 24 acres of rough pasture.’

It was also within our budget. Twenty one years of self employment had taught me not to overstretch.

Directions took us along the southern bank of the tree-lined Esk until, a mile from the mouth of the valley, a narrow lane branched right. Through hazelnut hedges, out of which strolled a roe buck who looked at us as if we should not have been there. And then a cluster of neat pink granite single storey buildings. Over a cobbled yard and there, catching the evening sun’s rays on its wide façade was what I had brought my surveyor pal to scrutinise: the former master farmhouse.

The appointment was so late in the day because of the owner’s busy schedule. Arnold was a successful businessman who had been seduced by the property’s stunning rural setting three years earlier. Its backdrop of mountains and rolling woodland gave way to the sea. Here no roar of traffic, only the mewing of buzzards, a cockerel’s crow and the tumbling of one of the finest seatrout rivers in the land.

Arnold had taken until now to realise somewhere closer to a motorway would be a good idea for his commuting. Were I to live there my journey to work would involve nothing more than stepping out of bed and ambling downstairs.

Surveyor Clifford confirmed that the conversion of the property, overseen by its present owner, had been done to a high specification. It had an attached wing which resulted in a building near to perfect for the style of guesthouse I planned.

When I outlined my schemes to Arnold, up-market accommodation in the house for the discerning and bunkhouse style for the outward bounders, we were conducted to the defunct farm buildings. A barn, a workshop and various byres were all in good repair.

Then came a plus, overlooked in the advertising blurb – a quaint cottage, the sort you dream of for that recovery fortnight in the countryside. A brook even rippled past its windows. Perhaps it had been excluded because it had no roof or windows?

Those thick granite walls would never fall down.

The particulars listed a still-productive walled kitchen garden and I remembered the guesthouse, years ago, where I had been allowed to lift a root of new spuds and boil them over a camp fire in my own billy can. Alongside crisp bacon there is no finer breakfast in the whole world.

Mrs Arnold even ran a flock of free-range hens – which was where the cockerel must have come from.

My ambitious plans included a clay pigeon set-up and this field of rocky outcrops surrounded by trees would be ideal. Another meadow, marshy and rush-filled, would lend itself to a trout lake and a duck pond. Conservation was uppermost in my mind and tracks of roe deer, badgers and foxes abounded, so here would be the ideal setting for an observation hide. Arnold knew the roe buck we met earlier. It was already semi-tame. Control the vermin, improve the habitat and wildlife flourishes. My mind was racing headlong.

To finance this sort of ambitious project I had sold a lucrative sporting gun dealership in Lancashire with retail outlets in Blackpool and Preston.

So far my discovery appeared to be all plusses and no minuses. I already knew fishing on the Esk was available, although only by day ticket. I hoped to improve that situation. The secluded lake of Devoke Water could be easily accessed for more fishing and boating. The terrain also lent itself perfectly to pony trekking and, of course, endless hiking. For the camper there were plenty of hollow pitches in the rocky field.

Ancient Ravenglass, once a Roman port, with its pubs and tearooms, was a 15-minute drive away. Earlier in the day we had explored there and found an angling boat riding at anchor in the sheltered harbour. The skipper said he would be very pleased to take out my sea fishing parties. There could be all-year-round trips. When they are in a feeding frenzy, winter cod can be as exciting as summer bass.

If the reader thinks all this a bit too ambitious for a novice in the tourist trade I must explain that elder brother Charles was the proprietor of a busy fishing/shooting hotel in the Scottish Borders and I had helped out there many times over the years.

After that initial visit I was back and forth often over the next month to Eskdale. Deer stalking and extended fishing rights were successfully negotiated and I had, hopefully, found local tradesmen for the outbuilding conversion work. As soon as I put a bid in for the property it was accepted.

Among the local contacts I had talks with was Georgina, whom, I discovered, might have riparian rights on the banks of the Esk. My first meeting with her was memorable for all sorts of reasons.

‘Of course we must talk fishing. Come for coffee tomorrow,’ she had boomed down the phone.

The farm where Georgina lived was straight out of Hugh Walpole’s Rogue Herries epic novels; slightly neglected, antiquated and hidden inside a super-abundant apple orchard. A rap on the half-open door brought a strident ‘Come in. Take a seat. Won’t be a minute.’

Cats were everywhere. I love cats more than dogs. It goes back to childhood when my cat Timothy used to bring home freshly-killed rabbits during the Second World War. What we couldn’t eat ourselves I sold for sixpence each. Two felines tried to jump onto my knee and the big one kicked the little one off.

‘Hope you like cats,’ – came the contralto from somewhere above my head.

The house was not, surprisingly, perfumed by cats. Cigar smoke was the all-pervading odour. This and the melodious tones from its owner were beginning to ring bells. Then Georgina swept down the stairs and I remembered – Eskdale Agricultural Show last September.

In those days Eskdale Show was the year’s most frantic rural gathering in Cumbria. They were proud of their 50-foot-long ale bar. Only beer was sold, no draught, just bottles. The wise organisers knew they sold more that way. You didn’t buy one bottle, you bought as many as you could hold. The seasoned wore coats with large pockets to stow them in. Making it to the bar was as close as you could get to a Murrayfield rugby scrum. Bodies were five deep.

Georgina and her Churchillian cigar did not, however, have to fight. I happened to be looking towards the ale tent entrance when she strode in, a good head taller then the surrounding indigenous Cumbrians whose forbears were the squat Celts and Roman marauders. There did not appear to be another female in the tent and it was like the parting of the waves as she steered towards the bar. Everyone seemed to know her except me. I just gazed bemused.

In the tumbledown farmhouse Georgina’s handshake had been what I had expected it to be.

‘Tea, coffee or a snifter?’

For an hour we discussed terms for fishing rights on a considerable length of the southern bank of the Esk.

Georgina said she was glad I had arrived in the valley. Her late father-in-law designate, Bill (M.W.M.) Fowler, had shot and fished there all his life. I already knew about this wartime bomber pilot. In 1965 he had written The Countryman’s Cookbook and I had a copy [reprinted in 2007 and now, with the huge interest in game cooking, a best seller].

Over the weeks leading up to the launching of my proposed venture I relayed my plans in detail to Arnold but, somehow, there was a strange lack of enthusiasm. His reticence made me faintly uneasy. I shrugged it off. Throughout my 50 years, pessimism had rarely been allowed to become a soul mate.

With three days to go before we were due to sign the contract I phoned the Planning Board, to get some idea of the paperwork necessary for my schemes, and that is when I discovered the reason for the vendor’s unease.

‘We won’t allow you to do anything like that in Eskdale,’ was the broadside.

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Our policy is to discourage commercialisation on such a scale in that area of The Lakes.’ He was adamant.

Here was the reason for the zero enthusiasm. Had Arnold gone down that road already? I suspected so.

Solicitors and a local councillor were hurriedly contacted. The councillor said he would support my plans, at a costly appeal, but agreed with the lawyers that I would be unlikely to win.

I left it for the agents to tell their client. They were as unmoved as you would expect a member of that profession to be. Did you know that you need no sort of qualification whatsoever to become an estate agent? Just the skin of a conger eel, tough and slippery. I didn’t speak to Arnold again. Would I have...