Guest User
September 25, 2023
This is a very expensive and highly rated hotel so I had high expectations. We were disappointed. It’s a beautiful old country house stuck in a Time Capsule - we were reminded of Fawlty towers on several occasions. I don’t normally write long reviews but feel the need to do so here. We happened to arrive at the same time as several other guests so the single receptionist was doing her best to deal with everybody quickly. That may explain why I didn’t know there was tea and cake on offer until I read other trip advisor reviews just now. We had a courtyard room and it was raining. No tea or coffee making facilities in our room, or a TV for what that’s worth. The room was fine. Spacious but dated, especially the bathroom. On arrival I’d checked the time, 7:30pm, that I’d booked dinner and asked if we could eat a bit earlier. Of course said the friendly receptionist who suggested we have a drink in one of their sitting rooms while perusing the menu. Great idea I thought so we arrived at 6:50. It took quite some time to find a spare sofa to sit on as everywhere was full. We eventually found one in a lovely little room just next the restaurant. We then asked a passing waitress whether we should go to the bar to order a drink or whether somebody would come to take our order. She said if we were in a hurry to go to the bar but otherwise somebody would be with us very soon. 10 minutes later we decided to head to bar for a drink only to be told that we couldn’t order ourselves but had to wait for somebody to come to us. There were lots of waiters and bar tenders running around very busily. After a further 5 minutes, a waiter came for our order, to be followed swiftly by several more. We were given the menu and told that we’d be called when our table was ready. The only real choice is for the main dish so quick to choose. At 7:40 we gave up and went into the restaurant asking if we could go to our table. Firstly we were told that we’d not made a booking. I explained that I’d confirmed it with reception on arrival. The lady on the desk told us to return to our sofa while she spoke to management. She returned eventually to say that the problem was there was another male guest with the same name which had led to the confusion (unlikely I think as our name is unusual and it was me, female, who’d made the booking). She led us to our table only to discover that another couple was already there. So back to sofa. Called again for another table next which was a bottle of Prosecco. We said we’d not ordered it. They said it was a gift and there was a card with it. Card said happy anniversary. Not our anniversary we said, this bottle is intended for another couple. We were told we were wrong. Eventually the senior waitress agreed that there’d been a mix up and removed the bottle. We weren’t going to leave the table having now at last sat down at 8:05. Service still a bit slow ( a case of lots of waiting staff running around frenetically