Driveways in Keswick

Keswick

Driveways in Keswick, done properly

Keswick sits in the wettest corner of England — Borrowdale, just up the valley, is the wettest inhabited place in the country — and everything about how a driveway is built here follows from that one fact. Water that cannot get away goes under the surface instead, and then it freezes. Permeable is not a preference in CA12, it is the design. It also keeps you the right side of the National Park Authority, which takes surface water seriously because it ends up in Derwentwater rather than in a drain. On materials, Honister slate and the grey-green local stone are what the buildings are made of, and paving that picks that up settles into a Keswick property where a bright red block sits on top of it and argues. A lot of what we lay round here is for holiday lets off the Penrith Road and around Portinscale, where a drive takes a changeover of cars every few days and still has to photograph well.

• Borrowdale is the wettest inhabited place in the country — permeable isn't a preference here, it's the design
• Inside the National Park, surface water ends up in Derwentwater, so drainage gets looked at
• Holiday lets off the Penrith Road take a changeover of cars every few days and still have to photograph well