My boyfriend booked this hotel for two nights as a surprise for me, lovely gesture, shame about the hotel.
Ill start with the positives... The location is lovely, overlooking the Rutland reservoir. W... more
My boyfriend booked this hotel for two nights as a surprise for me, lovely gesture, shame about the hotel.
Ill start with the positives... The location is lovely, overlooking the Rutland reservoir. We didn't have good weather but still had a nice walk around part of it on the day we left.
The free chunky chocolate chip biscuits and bottles of water were a nice touch and there are multiple free toiletries. They even gave hot chocolate sachets on the first night (great for me as I don't drink tea or coffee). We had a view of the reservoir from our balcony which was quite nice. Although the balcony was full of wet piles of leaves which must have been gathered over some time and the two metal chairs were filthy.
When we checked in we were allocated a room on the top floor of the annex building. Having stayed in a premier inn the night before, it seemed very small and the low ceilings probably accentuated this. But that wasn't really an issue for us. The room was dated and grubby. Dirty marks and fingerprints all over the walls and even dirty marks on the ceiling somehow. The sheets also had what looked like rust stains... At least we hoped that's what it was.
The bathroom was very small and had an odd toilet system which cleaned and airdryed your bum judging by the illustrations on the control panel! Didn't seem to work anyway as no signs of power. One bonus we thought was the jet spa type bath. In the evening we filled up the bath, got it to the right temperature, turned on the jets and..... Loads of black mould came spurting out of all of the jet sections! So we had to empty the bath and give up on that idea. But the jets wouldn't turn off by using the button we had pushed to start them! So as the water level dropped let's say a watery mess was had! We managed to locate a master power switch outside the bathroom on the wall beside the table which had the coffees on, and thankfully this worked.
Oddly the shower screen didnt fully reach the bath, so any water spray went through the gap and on the floor. Worse though was the temperature control. Took so long to get a non scoulding/freezing temperature with millimetre turns of the taps... Then when you got in, every 60 seconds or so you'd get a burst of scolding water for 3 seconds.
Another problem was sound proofing, or rather lack of. We heard everything going on in the room next to ours /below us. TV, snoring, and every movement. One room had their morning shower at 7am both days, so no lie in for us! It was so loud that the first time it woke us both up and we thought someone was in our bathroom! Certainly sounded as if our shower was running.
After being out in town for the first day of our stay we arrived back at about 2:30pm and the room hadn't been made up. Thought it was unusual so asked at reception what times the rooms are done...got a very vague, unconvincing answer of 'erm...anytime, erm... probably right now' so I asked was there not a set time between which cleaning was done? To which I got the reply 'arrivals get priority'. She then said she'd chase it up for me... Just as we reached the door to leave she asked which room we were in. When we returned later that night the room had been done and it actually looked a lot cleaner than when we first arrived the previous day.
We didn't try the restaurant as after checking the menu it didn't seem our cup of tea and we'd read mixed reviews online. But when we were coming and going from the hotel we hardly saw anyone in there eating.
This hotel has so much potential if it had some investment. The exterior looks lovely and the location is great for a quiet get away.
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