Guest User
March 23, 2024
My wife and I booked this place as a one night stay including breakfast using an Activity Superstore voucher. I had no issues booking over the phone and was asked to bring the voucher with me when checking in, however when arriving to check in, there were no staff manning the reception. After waiting for a good few minutes, I walked into the restaurant to find a member of staff, who came over to reception but struggled to check us in using the system. We received no welcome, smile or friendly verbal exchange from this person, and found they were still having issues when a colleague of hers was called over to help to which there was no communication and instead joked and laughed to each other in front of us which we found to be quite poor service. Thankfully, another colleague came over to help and checked us in, despite him saying my name was booked as 'Alex Underwright' instead of 'Alexander Wright' which has never happened in my life haha! We weren't told where our room was, so we walked up the stairs and tried to find it ourselves which was fortunately not difficult at all. The key was a bit fiddly being an old-fashioned lock which also needed to be locked from the inside, but the room itself was a nice temperature and looked quite fresh. The decor around the whole hotel was quite nice and well-kept. We had a restaurant reservation booked for when we arrived, so we made our way down to the room signposted as 'Restaurant', however upon entering the room we were met with a lot of staring people next to a buffet and no staff which was awkward. We were told later on that the normal restaurant room was closed on Fridays but there was no staff around to tell us this. The waitress was the same person who I found to check us in who wasn't interested in talking to us any more than the bare minimum and oddly provided us with 5 menus for the 2 of us. After almost half an hour of sat waiting, the waitress came over again and asked if the rest of our party would be joining us to which I mentioned it was just my wife and I celebrating our anniversary. She responded by saying we'd booked a table for 5 which I hadn't mentioned at all when booking! After this strange mix-up, the orders came within good time and all the food was of great quality and seemed to be locally-sourced, particularly the beef and bacon for the Walnut Tree Burger. The prices were pretty good value too and the service from the older male barman who checked us in was much better and more welcoming. We asked for a bottle of still water to take to our room after the meal and he let us have a free chilled bottle of tap water instead to save money which was a nice touch. The bed was comfy, however there was an uncovered window at the end of our room next to the bathroom so light quickly filled the room by 6:30AM and woke me up early. The train noises being located next to a fast-moving line thankfully weren't bad enough to wake us up before that despite being quietly audible from our room