A BARROW baking enthusiast is set to open her own bakery and sandwich shop.

Lyn Colyer, 56, will open The Bake Shed in Roose Road on Thursday with a selection of freshly baked cakes and delicatessen-style sandwiches and salads.

She has created three part-time roles and an apprenticeship to help her get the business off the ground.

Mrs Colyer even intends to theme the shop according to the seasons, opening with an autumn style before baking some skull and pumpkin shaped cake-pops for Halloween.

Opening her own shop has something of a lifelong dream for Mrs Colyer, who had wanted to get into the culinary arts at a young age but followed a different path.

She said: “I think it was always something I’d wanted to do, even when I was in my teens, but at the time baking wasn’t that fashionable.

"I used to do a lot of home baking from an early age and had wanted to go into the restaurant trade but money can prevent you from doing that when you’re younger.

“I ended up going into administration as a career for the last 35 years but I’ve always had this love of food and especially the baking side of things.

“With Great British Bake Off becoming a big thing, I started doing baking for colleagues at work who’ve now been fattened up nicely over the last 18 months and we decided rather than keeping our money in the bank that we would set up a business.”

The Bake Shed intends to fill a perceived gap in the market for freshly baked goods and high quality sandwiches.

Mrs Colyer hopes the people of Barrow will respond to the new business as an alternative to pre-packed supermarket sandwiches.

She said: “I think it’s time for a little bit of a change and I think over the years we’ve got to the stage where most of the shops in Barrow have closed that used to do baked goods like us, but it’s become a bit of a decline.

“People are looking for quality in what they’re buying and they want something a little bit different and want somewhere that will be able to react to change as people diet’s change, so we’ll be looking at doing skinny cupcakes and more salads as well, but we will still have our unhealthy options of course.”

She added: “The shop is predominantly for the cake and sandwich market but we’re also stocking Higginson’s Pies from Grange, which are award-winning pies really packed with meat and fillings.

“We’re hoping that people will like the sort of things that we’re trying to introduce and some styles that you wouldn’t find in the local supermarkets, like smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, something a little different, of a higher quality and wonderfully tasty.”