Prince Charles visited Tebay this morning to meet the team behind the award-winning motorway services.
His Royal Highness was introduced to Sarah Dunning OBE, chair of Westmorland Family Limited, which owns Tebay Services.
He visited the butchery department and met with apprentices taking part on the butchery training scheme.
His Royal Highness viewed the cheese section and cakes department, before moving onto the lifestyle section to meet a local producer of wool.
He also met members of the Dunning family, long-serving staff, and apprentices before unveiling a plaque to commemorate HRH’s visit and celebrating Tebay Services’ 50th anniversary.
Tebay Services is the only family-run service station in the UK and works with more than 70 producers from within a 30-mile radius.
With 4.5 million visitors a year, it is a lifeline for the local community who work and trade there. The business was named Specialist Food Retailer of the Year at the Cumbria Food Awards 2022.
Tebay will be back for series two of A Lake District Farmshop on Channel 4 on Saturday.
Prince Charles also visited Hutton-in-the-Forest, the home of Lord Inglewood, chairman of Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. He met members ofthe farming community and the people behind the plans to revitalise Newton Rigg.
The prince again voiced his support for the Cumbrian farming community and shared a clear understanding of the problems facing them. He told the group seeking to renew Newton Rigg College, near Penrith that the college’s closure was a tragedy and showed interest in the plans to revive it.
It was not all serious conversation though, as he also renewed his friendship with Hazel and Joe Relph, of Greystoke.
The couple ran a B&B in Borrowdale for many years where the prince stayed twice a year until they retired.
He went on to visit Carlisle’s water treatment works to see how ultraviolet LEDs are making ripples in the field of low energy water treatment. Developed by Penrith firm Typhon, the technology is the only one of its kind capable of disinfecting drinking water supplies on a large scale.
Tested and developed with water company United Utilities, the technology has been scaled up and now the world’s first ever municipal UV LED disinfection system is in operation at the site.
His Royal Highness met employees from both Typhon and United Utilities and discussed how the award-winning system, with its advantages of superior safety, energy efficiency and low running costs, could help address safe access to water globally.
Typhon CEO Matt Simpson said: “We were honoured that His Royal Highness was interested to come and learn more about this hugely important leap for UV technology in the water industry. It was wonderful to be able to share the story of how a small local firm and the local water company have worked together to take the idea all the way through from demonstration scale to a marketable industrial application right here in Cumbria.
“We explained how the process works, the challenges involved in developing such a unique disinfection solution, and the potential future benefits for the water industry globally and for high skilled employment opportunities in the North Lakes area.”
United Utilities’ Head of Innovation, Kieran Brocklebank said: “United Utilities is proving to be quite a force for innovation in the UK water sector thanks to our Innovation Lab programme, where we identify and incubate the best emerging technologies. Our relationship with Typhon is a real success story and we were delighted to help showcase what can be achieved when industry fully invests in the next generation of talent and ideas.”
