"The location worked out well for us, but that was the only good thing about our stay.
The front of the hotel looks nice enough, but the back where the car park is looks a bit like The Cecil Hotel - but let's not judge a book by its cover....
To get from the car park to the hotel, you have to walk up some narrow and treacherous steps - stepping over empty beer cans, abandoned vapes and some dodgy looking stains on the floor.
Once we got into the hotel, we discovered a notice at reception telling us that there was no breakfast - it then went on to contradict itself as it implied there was breakfast for guests. The initial booking I made was confusing - every option said breakfast was included, but some options specifically mentioned breakfast, so I asked about this notice. We were told that there would be no cooked breakfast, but there would be a continental breakfast.
After our terrible, freezing night with trombone plumbing and hearing every item being plugged in and out in the adjoining rooms, we entered the ‘breakfast’ room and stood around waiting for someone to maybe just even say ’take a seat’, but in the end decided to grab a coffee and find a table. The breakfast on offer consisted of hard, stale croissants and defrosted, cheap bread next to a toaster. There were also ‘cereals’?
I put the least offensive looking bread in the toaster and picked up a croissant - which is how I discovered it was so hard. I wasn’t really sure what to do, but another lady asked for her’s to be microwaved, so I did the same. The man behind the counter looked confused, so the lady had to explain how to heat them up.
I took my toast and sat down to drink my coffee, but had to spit it straight out. I am not fussy about coffee, but there was something very wrong with that - maybe the milk was off, but my son said his was really watery. He had ‘Coco Pops’ that were clearly not real Coco Pops and were very stale and inedible - which means he did not eat them. I managed to eat some of the toast (I don’t normally eat bread, as it makes me bloaty - and certainly not cheap white bread), but when the croissant came back that was also chewy and inedible.
That is when we decided enough was enough and we raced back to our room, packing in a hurry and getting out as quickly as possible so we could find breakfast and coffee elsewhere.
Unfortunately, in the rush, I left something behind and when I contacted the hotel to explain and suggested that as a gesture of goodwill, they return it, I was first told by reception that it had been found and was waiting for collection and when I said that was not possible - I live too far away - I was then contacted by the General Manager to say they would try and locate it...
I replied and here is an excerpt of that email:
"With regards to breakfast - everywhere on your website mentions ‘breakfast included’ (see screenshot attached). If somewhere in the small print you have the note that it is not cooked, then I can assure you it is not obvious to anyone booking it. That is besides the point - we would have been happy with a continental breakfast, but I’m pretty sure stale croissants, stale cereal and off milk (or whatever caused that awful coffee) would not be acceptable in any setting and I would suspect that you would not have been able to eat it either. I am not fussy and not prone to complaining - which is why we did not raise the fact that our room was bitterly cold at 2/3am in the morning - but leaving my make-up bag behind because I was pre-occupied with finding somewhere else to eat breakfast before we headed off on a 2 hour drive has tipped me over and under these circumstances I feel that the least you can do is return the item as a gesture of good will."
I have not heard from them since."
