Old Vicarage Hotel: 6 Aug 08

I’m a regular user of the Active Hotels website to get good hotel rooms in the UK at prices that don’t break the bank. I started using it about 4 years ago after attending a lunchtime seminar where its founder and developer told us how he’d built it up in 3 years before selling out for a cool £150 million! I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be but I still get some good deals out of it and so it was with the Old Vicarage Hotelin Worfield near Bridgenorth, Shropshire.

It’s an excellent hotel and I stayed for half price making it an excellent deal. It’s set in the middle of the countryside so its very very quiet. But it does have wireless broadband: free but only in the public rooms. It doesn’t suffer the excesses of many country house hotels: no potpourri and not much evidence of Country Life or the Tatler.

The hotel claims to have a top class restaurant. And of course it needs one because there’s nothing else within walking distance. I was disappointed. I thought it was expensive (£35 for 2 courses) and uninspiring (my crayfish spring rolls were not exactly packed with crayfish and my halibut was, well, very fishy) And the espresso machine was not working. On the plus side the service was first class and there was a good choice of wines by the glass.

A nice story from breakfast: I turned up at about 0725 surprised to see guests already there since service was not due to start. The lady in charge said that ‘they probably didn’t realise that breakfast didn’t start until 0730’. Maybe it was more of a case of the hotel not realising that its guests wanted breakfast earlier! To be fair the kitchen staff responded and there was food on everyone’s table just as soon as they wanted it.