Leeming Wells Hotel
Wasted potential
Would you stay here again – NEVER. Would you recommend – NEVER. we were booked to stay here as part of a family wedding.
There are only 5 rooms but nonetheless multiple patrons with the same name with reservations here seemed to stump the staff! We had booked a family room as we have a toddler. When we arrived the barmaid had only one key left but hesitated to hand it over and for good reason. It turned out that another party, not with the same surname or even similar had been moved into our room. This was a relatively young couple with no children in tow and with a different surname – was given a family room in the name of Mr & Mrs X! It took over 30 minutes for them to work this out. First the barmaid, then another ‘senior’ member of staff, who did a lot of sighing and chin rubbing followed by the landlord from the pub next door. It took a while to find a key for our new room and as it turns out the previous occupant took it home with them so we were given the cleaner’s key.
The room we were re-allocated into was adjacent to the main door of the reception room. I asked if this would make our new room noisier to which the answer was ‘it finishes at midnight’. I pointed to our 2 year old and asked if this room was noisier than the one we should be in but to no avail – apparently the music finishes at midnight. I don’t know about you but I’ve been to weddings before and even though the music ends at the strike of 12 I’ve never experienced that that means all the patrons leave quietly on tiptoes. Needless to say, when the door was closed it was deafening and when it was opened it was really deafening – our child finally dropped off at 1am.
The supplied travel cot wasn’t clean and the only bedding supplied for that was a large bedsheet. The room was ok, very dated. The duvet on the bed was leaden – literally like sleeping under a lead apron you adorn during an xray! We were also booked in for dinner at the pub next door on our arrival.
Because of the delay in getting us into a room we were late for our dinner reservation but our other guests were holding it for us waiting next door. We rang them to order us some food and thank god we did. The child’s meal came out relatively quickly as we’d asked for it with starters but it took over an hour for our main meals to arrive – that’s from ordering to it landing on the table. The pub was packed and all seats were taken but there just didn’t seem to be enough staff. In fact I think I only saw one waitress. We also had to fill in a breakfast form to be handed in the night before.
A lot of emphases was put on this being in the night before which seemed pretty pointless as, the next morning, we were greeted by a dour woman who took everyone’s egg order and told it us it would be a buffet breakfast. We tried to complain upon paying but was told by the pub landlord that he only ‘looks after’ next door, the Leeming Wells hotel, at the weekend or when the owner is on holiday. This seems odd that a hotelier would hand over the run of their business at, what must be, the busiest time to someone to caretake in effect. It was a really disappointing stay for something that, as a family, we had looked forward to and it cost us £90 to boot! We questioned this as our parents had paid only £80 and we weren’t in the family room to be told ‘£10 for travel cot’.
No recompense or even apology was offered for the confusion during our stay or for the delay to our meal the excuse being ‘I only look after it at the weekend, I don’t set the prices’. Quite priceless!!