If Fawlty Towers was reviewed in Trip Advisor...

A bonkers hotel, run by a bonkers manager (owner).

Meet the crew

We arrived in the afternoon, and while there was, of course, ample parking, there were no EV charging points, so I’m not sure how future-proof the place is. Thankfully though, there are a good dozen points nearby, so no real dramas there.

Rain in summer, clearly pre-climate change

What I was a little puzzled by was the sight of a tall, skinny man shouting obscenities at what I can only assume was his parked car, and then beating it with a length of foliage. Weird, but okay.

Things got way weirder when it turned out that car-beating man was actually the hotel’s manager, although he was of course at pains to point out that he was the owner (maybe the owner needs to actually get a manager, I’d suggest).

We’d booked our room over the phone - can you believe that they didn’t actually know what the internet was - and rocked up to reception. On that point, word of mouth advertising, never believe it! Anyway, at reception was a glammed-up, well preserved woman who, believe it or not, was actually smoking! I kid you not, overflowing ashtray and everything. We waited politely for her to finish her phone call (landline, obvs), and we booked in. To be fair, she was very polite to us, and gave us our room keys without problem, although when she explained the meal times and we explained our allergies, it took a while for the message to get across. I got the impression that intolerances wasn’t general knowledge, but I think she finally figured it out, and she seemed to have massive patience. I was a little taken aback though, when she said at one point, ‘this is a hotel, not a borstal.’

Our room was a little small, and definitely no sea view, and it was a bit of a merry-go-round at dinner. The waiter, who I think was Spanish., first asked our room number, then gave us a table, then realised that it was Saturday, so he moved us to another table.

As we ate our dinner, which was actually very good, we saw some really strange things. The manager/owner first of all cut up one man’s omelette and then threw it away, actually insulted some German guests, really, really badly. He talked about them starting the war and then goose-stepped through the hotel. If I hadn’t seen it, I simply wouldn’t have believed it. Clearly Mr Fawlty is a brexiteer.

The bar was very quaint, not opening until 6PM, and it seemed that an elderly retired Major was a regular there.

The whole stay was a little chaotic. I don’t think the staff communicated with each other very well. Mr Fawlty seemed to be pathologically terrified of his wife (the elegant smoking lady), and seemed to homicidally hate the Spanish waiter, to say nothing of the car. In a strange way, the maid, Polly, I think her name was, seemed to hold everything together, but I don’t know how.