The Barnsdale, Rutland

We really liked the hotel overall. The location is lovely, the interior is beautiful and we especially enjoyed the spa area, outdoor pool and sauna. Breakfast was nice, although there is some room for improvement. I also absolutely loved the little bag of cookies left hanging on the door - such a sweet and thoughtful gesture that made us smile.😊

Unfortunately, the cleanliness of our room was very disappointing. There was a lot of dust, including behind the TV and furniture, as well as spider webs. We even found old welcome cards from previous guests behind the chest of drawers, which made it feel like these areas had not been properly cleaned for quite some time. The most unpleasant part was the non-slip bath mat. It was rolled up in a bag, and when I took it out to use it, it was black and mouldy. Needless to say, we couldn't use it. It's genuinely a shame because we really liked the hotel and its facilities. With more attention to deep cleaning and room maintenance, our experience would have been so much better…

Location friendliness

Nothing

Very helpful with secure storage for our bikes. Room was comfortable and we appreciated the shortbread and decent tea and coffee. Breakfast was good with hot food cooked to order.

The bathroom was small and suffering from age and the effects of condensation. The bin had not been emptied and the toilet holder was broken but these were very minor issues that did not detract from our experience.

Nice environment, room was a decent size and clean.

There were some damp patches in the ceiling of the room, some remedial work is required before it gets worse. The staff at breakfast were far from attentive. They had run out of plates and bowls, and it seemed to be a huge effort for someone to fetch replacements from the kitchen. Labels were missing from which milk was which so everyone was smelling them to figure out which to have. Asking for more cutlery seemed to be a debate about what was and wasn’t on the table (or what should or shouldn’t have been on them).