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When holiday makers head off to escape the daily grind there’s one thing they increasingly consider essential – to stay connected.
The Quiet Site, the award-winning eco-friendly holiday park and glamping site near Ullswater has that covered not only with superfast broadband but also with plans for a new dedicated work café.
Owner and managing director Daniel Holder said: “More and more we get people who say, we are coming on holiday, and we are really looking forward to it, but we have to work, what’s the broadband like?
“It is an expectation of visitors now. They expect to have what they have at home and that can be incredibly fast connections.”
Fibrus is connecting homes and businesses across Cumbria, both through commercial rollout and the UK Government-funded Project Gigabit. Fibrus was awarded an extension to its Project Gigabit contract in April 2025, enabling an additional 21,000 homes in Cumbria to benefit from gigabit-capable broadband.
Once the expanded rollout is complete, and alongside other commercial plans, an estimated 99 per cent of homes and businesses in Cumbria will have access to next-generation broadband – paving the way for a digitally connected future across the region.
The Quiet Site recently switched to Fibrus’ super-fast full-fibre broadband as part of its mission to meet the needs of modern holiday makers.
Daniel said: “We are putting in a workers’ café where people can go and work. We’ll have desks and points to plug in and fast Wifi.
“If people don’t want to work in their accommodation, this will be available for them to do a couple of hours or whatever they need.”
The Quiet Site has had broadband for 10 years, but Daniel says Fibrus has increased their capacity to 500Mb.
“Ninety-seven per cent of our bookings come in online, so if we were not connected, we would be in trouble. No broadband, no business,” says Daniel.
Since taking over the business in 1985 Daniel – a Londoner who started out as a jockey and then became an engineer, and his wife Anne, who hails from Clifton near Penrith – have turned the site into a trail blazer for sustainability.
As well as their 50,000 visitors a year, they host two or three business owners a week who want to learn from the many sustainability innovations on site.
After 25 years’ hard work and around £2m investment, the park site itself is carbon neutral and has transitioned away from fossil fuels.
Inefficient static caravans have been replaced with the business’s own design of highly sustainable accommodation units.
Eighty per cent of the site’s energy needs are generated from renewables; solar, biomass – using wood all grown within 10 miles of the site – and geothermal. They have Britain’s first and only Zero Waste Shop on a holiday park and you won’t find a plastic coffee cup anywhere. Not to mention the wildflower meadows, 10,000 trees planted and many more initiatives.
The park has received numerous awards, including the prestigious King’s Award for Enterprise in 2024.
Ross Jackson, Senior Associate Stakeholder Engagement from Hyperfast Networks said, “We are proud to be able to help the team at The Quiet Site to provide the very best connectivity for visitors who want to take a sustainable holiday in the Lakes.
“Helping to look after the beautiful Cumbrian landscape and the environment is very much a part of our ethos and it’s great to be able to add our expertise to a business blazing a trail in sustainable hospitality.”
Daniel says using hot water for heating was one of the most important steps in their journey to sustainability, and having a reliable internet connection to monitor this system also plays a part.
“The transformational thing was the district heat main, which is a highly insulated underground pipe which links all the accommodation units to a heat source,” said Daniel.
“We have our heat source in hot water; we have 30,000 litres of hot water. Eighty per cent of the energy you use in a house is hot water, so it makes sense to move it around. Over the last 15 – 20 years we’ve been installing that system.
“We heat all the water sustainably and then we store it and move it around the park to each of our glamping units and cottages and bars instead of having 100 gas boilers.”
Daniel said, “We monitor our biomass boiler and Solar PV panels predominantly online. Any problems with the system are flagged immediately by email, so we rely on being able to access our emails and the online system regularly. Before we had Fibrus, we used to have internet drop-outs, but now it’s so much more reliable.”
Hyperfast Networks GB, delivered by Fibrus, is working to connect communities across Cumbria through Project Gigabit, the UK Government’s rollout of lightning-fast, reliable broadband.
To receive updates on whether your home or business can be connected to the Fibrus network, you can check your postcode and register your interest at: https://hyperfastgb.com/