"Our room (number 2) was large, but strangely had very little space on which to place items such as a laptop, bag, books etc. The bedside cupboards were very small, the surface being taken over by the phone, lamp and radio etc, leaving very little room for water glass etc over night. One corner of the room was taken over by a bath. I realise there is something of a fashion for this in hotels at the moment, but feel it would have been far more useful if there had been a table and a couple of chairs there to use when sending or receiving emails or checking information on the Internet. However, the wifi signal turned out to be dreadful, moving at glacial speed and eventually giving up. Luckily I did not have any urgent matters to deal with. Tea and coffee in the room is always appreciated, however the arrangements in room 2 were not good. The big modern coffee maker was unnecessary; the money spent on that would have been far better used to provide a teapot (I dislike making tea with a tea bag in a cup) and maybe a small fridge in which to keep fresh milk (or even a small thermos flask full of fresh milk, which I have experienced in other hotels). UHT milk in sachets is vile, and there is really no excuse for using it these days. Also the small cups were pretty useless. Decent sized mugs would have been preferable. The piece of paper we were given at check in stated that the pedestrian access through the side door on the street would be locked after 11.00 pm. In fact it was locked when we tried to access it at 10.30pm, meaning that we had to walk around the corner to the entrance through the car park. I’m afraid we also had a less than perfect experience at breakfast time. The young girl who served us was delightful, but that’s where the delight ended! The table which contained the continental breakfast was most unattractive the only fresh fruit being a couple of oranges and apples and some very tired looking bananas. The pastries were very good, but the coffee and the fruit juice were not. The fruit juice was not fresh and the coffee was undrinkable, bitter stewed stuff contained in a thermos jug. The table on which all this was displayed was swimming with liquid (either coffee or juice I think). I ordered one poached egg on toast but was actually served with two. I might have been tempted to eat the second had the first been good unfortunately it was not. I don’t know what procedure you use to cook your eggs, but this one had obviously been cooked some time before, held in suspended animation in some way and then warmed up just before service (though not very efficiently as it was lukewarm). The white was of a jelly like consistency and undercooked, while the yolk was overcooked. A most unpleasant experience I’m afraid (needless to say I did not eat the second egg). I am sorry to be so negative, I’d far rather be giving you a review full of thanks and praise for a lovely, comfortable stay, but I’m afraid I can’t. Bed and breakfast for the night cost us £225 (including the early check in fee) which is a great deal of money and I feel very short changed. But finally I have to take issue most strongly with your car parking set up. Luckily we had been warned by friends about the new NCP arrangements and the necessity to enter one’s car registration on an iPad in the hotel building within 10 minutes of arrival. We saw no warning signs in the car park itself and I see from reading Trip Advisor reviews since we returned home, that a lot of people have been caught out and charged a fine (sometimes as much as £100) if they failed to follow the requirements. This has resulted in some very angry reviews and I’m not at all surprised. And local people whom we met during our visit to the town were all scathing and furious about the new set up. I don’t know who has the advantage of the hundreds of pounds of fines which have obviously resulted from this new arrangement; whether it’s you or NCP, but it seems to be a ridiculous situation. The damage to the hotel’s reputation must be huge and very destructive. How terrible to wantonly bring about such loss of reputation. I trust you will give some thought to amending the arrangements."
