VICTORIA AUSTIN was a teenager and still at school when she first worked part-time at The Lakeside  - as a potwasher. Now she’s back as Trainer for Food and Beverage, working out of both the Trinity House training academy and Lake Windermere’s best-loved four star hotel.

The 25-year-old was happy to quit an admin’ job at a Kendal paper mill to go back to the company where in two and a half years she graduated from the kitchen sink to serving in the bar and restaurants on a full-time basis.

“I’m just thrilled to have landed this job, really delighted,” she says. “I came home to Barrow from a restaurant job in Henley on Thames, worked in a hotel in Bowness and then did admin’ jobs in Millom and Kendal, but always felt that I could do better.

“Then I saw an ad’ in the Barrow Evening Mail and sent off my CV to Sarah Kendall. I was invited for interview, which seemed to go well, and then to a second interview when I had to demonstrate how to train silver service.

“I have to confess that I was a bit nervous, but somehow I got through it and I must have done something right because Sarah rang soon afterwards to tell me the job was mine. I work closely with Sarah at both Trinity and Lakeside training and supervising new starters in food and beverage and I couldn’t be happier.

“Even as a schoolgirl I realised just what a terrific hotel the Lakeside is. They have such high standards and now it’s my job to prepare others to work to those standards. How neat is that?”

Very neat. Seven years in the South of England working for Loch Fyne Restaurants in Henley, where she eventually became a supervisor, Oxford, Reading and Beaconsfield, gave her invaluable experience for the job she has now. But she never felt absolutely settled so far from Cumbria and was more than happy to come back to her roots.

She and her partner Philip have bought a house in Barrow and if happiness is coming back home and landing the job of your dreams then Victoria Austin is definitely walking on air.

“Now I feel settled, now I feel really excited about the future,” she says. “My previous job was nine to five in Kendal sending products from the paper mill to companies around the world.  I know hotel and restaurant work involves unsociable hours but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

“I’m just delighted to be back where I really belong and to be back at The Lakeside, where I spent so many happy hours all those years ago, is the icing on the cake.”

And if Victoria is happy, then so is Sarah Kendall, who was at Lakeside when the recent recruit to the current training staff was up to her elbows in washing-up liquid.

“We’re delighted to have her back and feel she will go from strength to strength,” says Lakeside’s Training Manager who also has responsibility for Trinity. "Although Victoria has no real background of this type of training work I felt from our first meeting with her that she had the personality, the drive and the enthusiasm to be the right person for the job."

It’s a long way and a bold step to swap Henley on Thames in Surrey for Barrow in Furness. But – and here’s a happy coincidence – the two places are actually twinned. “It’s just as if it was meant to be – me coming home and getting such a great job,” beams Victoria. It is indeed…