I first came to Low Newton and The Ship Inn in May 1999. I wanted to move away from Hertfordshire where I had lived for the last thirty years. I needed to earn a living and I had heard that there was a pub for sale in a village by the sea. I had done various jobs in my life and run my own business, but the one business I knew I didn’t want to run was a pub! However - I came, I saw and Low Newton conquered!!

Not for me the sensible option of coming up to stay for a week, to watch the pub in operation to see if I could cope with the whole business of running a pub, of meeting the locals and seeing if they would welcome this woman from the south. Oh no.

So six weeks later I arrived, complete with an enormous furniture van, three cats, two dogs and my youngest daughter Hannah who had just finished university and had decided to spend eighteen months with me running the pub.