A Cockermouth travel company whose premises were badly flooded in December is celebrating this week after scooping two awards and being named as one of the best businesses in the trade.

Cockermouth Travel, on Main Street, has won a Titan Tours Gold Award and Fred Olsen Cruises Longship Award.

Owner Paul Cusack said: "These are recognition of outstanding product knowledge and excellent sales with a very high percentage of repeat customers."

The company was asked to join the travel agents section of AITO – a network of 116 of the best independent travel agents in the UK – a few years ago.

Paul said: "You can only join by invitation and we have been recently listed as number three in the North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and 18th in the whole of the UK.

"I’m so very proud of the team as we have achieved this despite the floods and trading from a flat for the whole of January, which is traditionally our busiest month.

"I feel very lucky to have such a brilliant team. It’s fantastic to be back in our office – now looking amazing again – but it was a lot of hard work to reopen after only seven weeks.

"I had a huge amount of support from my staff in particular but also all the trades who put the office back together – everyone just pulled together and got on with it."