Third time lucky

SO what did you get up to in the first lockdown — bake banana bread, plant vegetables or take photographs of local wildlife?

It’s a fair bet that few of us would have had the nerve to set up a pop-up restaurant from scratch and make it such a success that it is back again this summer for a third year.

Minna Hughes was just 19 when she opened Lockdown Lodge on the south bank of the Thames near Hambleden Lock after she was forced to make an emergency exit from Botswana during her gap year travels as borders suddenly closed all over the world.

With all her plans scuppered, she returned home unexpectedly to mum Lisa and dad Chris near Henley, wondering how to fill her time.

But whose extraordinary idea was it to turn four converted shipping containers into a riverside bar, cafe and restaurant?

“It depends who you ask,” she admits. “I say it was dad but he says it was me. In reality, it was dad’s idea to see if it was possible and it was me who approached the landowners and created the brand.”

Minna was helped massively by her father’s line of work — he creates and hires out kitchens and makes customised spaces for a living.

So while Mr Hughes set about working out the logistics of the scheme, his enterprising daughter took on the role of preparing a business proposal.

Minna says: “We were umm-ing and ahh-ing in the early part of the lockdown but as things started opening up and the future looked clearer we thought, ‘Right, let’s do this.’

“I love learning but I’d never done this before so it was a very, very steep learning curve. Working on the confidence to ‘put it out there’ and risk being turned down was one of the hardest parts.”

At first, landowners were understandably sceptical about a teenage student pitching a business plan to them in the teeth of a pandemic. But as it gradually dawned that major events

hadn’t a hope of going ahead, Minna found a sympathetic ear from landowners the Copas family and all systems were go.

The containers were transported on lorries from dad’s storage yard in Binfield Heath to the riverside site and lifted into place using a crane a few days before the official opening on August 10, 2020.

They were then arranged end-to-end in two rows to form one 40ft long building — the ground floor for coffee, drinks and takeaways, the upstairs for sit-down dining — and Lockdown Lodge was in business for its three-week run.

This family affair saw Minna’s younger brother Barnaby set up a website while mum, who works for the Black Bears Polo team, was able to help with her marketing experience.

This third summer the Hugheses are again back in business from July 22 until August 15, serving coffee and takeaways seven days a week with Destination Dinners upstairs from Wednesday to Sunday where customers can enjoy a four-course tasting menu using locally sourced produce.

Hobbs of Henley is running a river taxi which can be booked in advance for the evenings.

Minna says: “This year we have Christie’s Catering joining the kitchen and having sampled their upstairs menu, I can say it is unbelievably good.

“We’ve also teamed up with Lynne Lambourne to create a sustainability-focused garden and highlight the issues of keeping the river clean. And we are teaming up with the Orange Bakery in Watlington for an evening with Alex and Kitty Tait when they will chat about their bread and their new book.”

During this summer’s run of Lockdown Lodge, Minna will have a full-on routine, starting in the morning and ending in the early hours.

“I try and head into work for 10-11am when I will take over the coffee machine to give the breakfast staff a break and make sure everyone is set up ready for lunch.

“If possible, I then try to get some of the boring behind-thescenes jobs done on my laptop while it is quieter and give a hand to any areas that need it while we are busier.

“On our Destination Dinner nights, I will help set up upstairs and then check-in during the evening.

“We tend to finish between 11.30pm and midnight and then I will lock up and head home to do some more back-of-housework before putting the tea towels on to wash and slumping into bed.”

It’s easy to forget that Minna, who is about to start her third year studying primary education at Oxford Brookes University, is still only 21 and still doesn’t know what she wants to do when she ‘grows up’.

“Actually, I want to do anything and everything,” she says. “I used to have a mental list of what I wanted to be and I remember wanting to be a firefighter, a vet, a soldier, a circus performer, depending on my mood.

“I’m still not set on the answer, to be honest, because there’s so much out there in the world and I don’t feel like a grown-up yet.”