Paradise Lost

Ah the great trial that is the FauxSurrey Summer holiday. I really don't know why I bother. Yes I attempted once more - maybe flushed with success after last years' huge triumph - to book 2 weeks away from the joy & comfort of my lovely home (and from the KC). We went slightly off piste and booked one week in a spa hotel (I know - ooer!) and the 2nd week in a holiday let. I did all my due diligence and I called the hotel and requested their best room BUT critically with a firm / hard mattress - spinal surgery & all - and then repeated my request with the owner of the holiday let - which was called Paradise but let me assure you it certainly wasn't Paradise by any stretch of anyone's imagination.

  

But let me start with the Spa - Lake Vyrnwy.

The view from our room was spectacular (see right), the room was a decent size, the bed was properly hard - HOORAH! - so my back held up and the food was amazing - delicious, creative, inventive - truly amazing but  .... the décor in our room wasn't brilliant. They clearly handn't got 'round to refurbishing the room we were in yet. We had black mould in the shower cubicle and mismatched furniture ... Not in a funky boho chic way, but in a charity shop, 80's pine chest way. Seriously what do you have to do to get proper luxury in the UK?? Am back on my campaign for a legal definition of luxury!

 

So we went downstairs to discuss the mould issue. But we decided as we loved the view & the bed, we would complain nicely - I took photos of the mould with me so it wasn't a matter of opinion! And with a smile & hard evidence people can't be difficult. 

 

And what a response - the people at reception were frankly brilliant. The power of good service. The receptionist was absolutely lovely & went & got herself a master key & took me on a tour of the hotel and we tested 10 beds in a variety of lake view rooms & to be fair whilst our room was in no way (no way at all sadly) the nicest - decor & amenities wise - the hotel had delivered what I had insisted on when I booked i.e. the hardest mattress in the building! And that is the most important thing as you well know. Still she agreed the mould was unacceptable and that our room would benefit from a couple of armchairs - as it was bank holiday the maintenance people were not in but she got onto getting armchairs as quickly as possible so all good.

 

The manager then tried to move our mattress to another room but as the bed we had was a huge super king there was only one other room it would fit into and whilst it had the view it didn't have a balcony which we really wanted - so the next day when we were out with our complimentary champagne picnic a handyman stripped out the mastic & redid the whole shower, and when we checked out they took 10% off our bill for "inconvenience" - we did not expect that. 10/10  & a gold star award for Lake Vyrnwy.

 

However the 2nd week was not so good. How did I book such a turkey? I was seduced by other people’s reviews & great photography that's how. The photographer seriously is a genius & deserves a medal. And I would love to know how all the people who left the '5 stars' / 'this is amazing' reviews live normally ... I will leave my honest review on TripAdvisor trust me! We went to a place called Paradise, near the Welsh borders. Or Hell as it has been renamed by us. We arrived at the cottage and I was dumbstruck. It looked nothing like the photos. Hoping the outside was no reflection of the inside we entered - and I burst into tears. It was very small, pokey, dark, stank of damp, had ridiculously low ceilings, old squidgy sofas and ridiculously high risers on the wooden stairs - which I managed to fall down 2x (NB this cottage claims to be child friendly!) and a slightly grubby shower curtain that had seen significantly better days hanging over the bath.  Despite my due diligence & 20 minute chat re: spinal surgery / bad back the bed was not what I would call firm, it was bouncy; as bouncy can be. We didn't even risk one night in it - we broke out the emergency orthopaedic airbed immediately as we had to stay come what may - the reason for booking this place was it was convenient to take FauxSurreyStepDaughter to view her new welsh uni. 

 

Then, 2 days in, FauxSurreyHubby's asthma kicked off as alongside the all-pervading damp were reams & reams of dried hops adorning the walls & shoved artistically into fireplaces - a brilliant trap & release system for impossible dust which created a perfect storm. So coughing, spluttering and staggering in pain we packed up the 4x4 and headed for the comfort of home   mere 4 days after we arrived.

 

That said we managed to eat incredibly well in the 4 short painful days we were there as we left the damp house as soon as physically possible each morning, not returning until we absolutely had to.

 

We discovered an interesting tapas bar in Hay on Wye, had a fab Sunday lunch at the Castle House Hotel in Hereford, and had amazing dinners at The Angel & the Kings Head Hotels in Abergavenny, and a stunning lunch with a view at The Falcondale Hotel in Lampeter (left).

 

But the piece de la résistance, the truly unexpected delight was the amazing Bear pub in Crickhowell. I cannot recommend The Bear highly enough. FSHubby had faggots (ugh for me but he waxed lyrical about how divine they were) and I had squid ink spaghetti with oak roasted salmon in a dill cream. Sublime. I could live in Crickhowell .... Maybe we should just buy our own holiday cottage there & be done with it?