Southwold, Suffolk, is a part of the country I have not visited before, but when I won a competition with Adnams beer, this was a combination I could not resist. Southwold is a town that is dominated by the brewery. It is the heart and appears in many products from marmalade to brown sauce. The Crown Hotel has recently been refurbished and boasts modern and boutique style rooms. The hotel front on the High Street, is charming and welcoming, with quirky corriders that suprise at every turn. However, when registering we were directed to the "stairs opposite the car park" which eventually we found as the old "staff entrance". This is an annexe to the main body of the hotel and the approach to our bedroom took me back to an old style B&B with a strange smell, and corridors that if you took a wrong turn led to staff quarters and mounds of furniture. We eventually reached our room, which from the outside was a plain door, but opened into a fantastic, modern room, what a difference. The view was a fire escape, but then you can’t have everything. Breakfast was stilted and formal and a bit too sparse for my partner.
