Keswick, where the second base is.

We are based in Keswick as well as on the coast, which matters here more than it would in most towns. If your roof opens up at two in the morning you want somebody who is already this side of the fells, not somebody setting off from the A595 — and we are. The phone is answered around the clock and the response to a Keswick roof is a Keswick response.

Keswick and the country round it is Lakeland slate — the green and grey stone quarried out of these fells, at Honister and elsewhere. It is nothing like the Welsh slate of the coast. It is thicker, considerably heavier, and it comes in random widths and thicknesses rather than uniform sizes. That means the roof has to be set out rather than simply covered: the largest, heaviest slates at the eaves, getting smaller in graded courses up to the ridge, each course sized and laid so the whole thing looks right and sheds water. Done properly it is one of the finest roofs in Britain. Done by someone treating it like a box of tiles, it looks wrong and it leaks.

The other thing to know is the planning. The town is inside the Lake District National Park and much of it is a conservation area, with plenty of listed buildings. What that means for you is that matching what is already there is not merely good manners, it is generally a requirement. Concrete tile is not going on a Keswick roof. Rooflights on visible slopes will want to be conservation pattern and may need consent.

A lot of property here is also let — holiday cottages, B&Bs, guest houses — where the real constraint is the calendar rather than the roof. If the job has to fit between bookings, tell us that when you ring and we will plan it round them.