We’ve just returned from a reunion held at this Georgian hotel and while it was fantastic for old training colleagues to meet up again after 50-odd years it is NOT a venue for those with disablements. While not shabby the interior is very dated, clean enough (no complaints there) and the gardens, we should imagine, looking over to the golf course, beautiful.
However, the facilities for the disabled have certainly not been fully addressed. We understood there to be only two designated rooms for the disabled. As to be expected of a building such as this it is full of stairs, but there is NO lift for the use of guests. The leisure centre has to be approached down a flight of turning stairs; the dining room has to be approached down stairs; some levels of bedrooms have to be scaled up and down like mountains – not enjoyable if you are in a wheelchair particularly. And while there are notices dotted around the parking areas suggesting you phone a number for assistance there are no designated porters. When it was suggested our wheelchair member should be pushed round on the flat outside to access the hotel entrance it had to be pointed out it was absolutely pouring with rain. Would they have liked that?
Reception, while respectful and polite, did not seem to be exceptionally efficient. Check-in time should be 3.00 p.m. but we were not able to access our key for another 30 minutes, a morning paper explicitly requested “disappeared” the next morning and another was not available at all. Bar and lounge staff seemed to also disappear when you needed them and this seemed to be the norm throughout our stay. The two-night stay in our room was noisy throughout with banging doors, from very late at night to the early hours when people started to leave and an excavator and dump trucks working from 8.30 a.m. in the grounds immediately outside our room.
Do staff ever read form instructions at all? Deciding to have breakfast delivered to the room the said form was duly filled in – the next morning the eggs arrived stone cold, toast instead of chosen bread, no milk for the cereal or tea, no orange juice, no cups and saucers for the tea. Heaven knows what we would have received if we had requested a full breakfast! To give reception their due they did apologise and removed the cost of breakfast. Would we return – NO.