I must have been asleep when I consulted Tripadvisor about this place. If I had read the recent reviews I NEVER would have booked it. There is virtually nothing positive to say about Solwood, except its location is pretty much as advertised. This is NO RETREAT/SPA. It felt more like a glorified campsite. There was no one to greet us, check us in or check in with us. We stayed in the Forest Den. It was dank and musty. No soap in the bathroom. No instructions on turning on the heat. (It was 55 degrees and damp). Not enough towels. (Didn't matter. We didn't want to use the dirty bathroom.) We stayed one night and left. (Have no idea whether we will get our money back as we have had no correspondence from owner). The Forest Den does not come with breakfast, but I had made arrangements to join the B and B guests for breakfast, confirmed in an email. They had no record of it when we arrived.

This was a complete disappointment and definitely false advertising.

I've stayed at Solwood 5 times. Each time I stay there it gets worse. The first time I stayed, it was great for a large party of 8, great price. However, the lady that is regularly there is very snarky to customers. The yard area has a lot of garbage around. One time I stayed in the main house for bed and breakfast. The room was ok, breakfast was good but the kitchen is dirty. They have a lot of piled up garbage. The outdoor shower is a great feature, however it's dirty with slugs crawling all over.

The Forest Den cabin has water issues. Sometimes the water doesn't work. The shower water pressure isn't very good. Drainage in the sink is poor. There's no proper stove, just a hot plate that doesn't heat up well since the electrical outlet has issues. The place is very damp and we found a slug in the washroom!

I wouldn't recommend this place. It would be best to stay somewhere else like Crystal Cove, Heart Garden or Long Beach Lodge. I have stayed at many places in Tofino, and this place is the worst. The only great thing is that its close to the beach.

The other reviews from august '08 say it well. We stayed the first 3 days of august. Don't let the website and price (high) fool you. This is no B&B. And the owner doesn't live there, she lives in Ucluelet 30 miles away.
The 'kids' who run it are just recruits looking for a room and board. We got very lucky in that our hosts happened to speak english and could actually put a breakfast together. They (a different one works everyday) were very honest about their job there and were very surprized they weren't asked if they could speak english and cook when applying for the job from their home country. Germany in our case. But I think we got lucky.
Secondly, we stayed in the cathedral room. No shower. Carpeted bathroom is pretty rough. Towels smelled moldy. Even the fresh ones. The whole room was kind of clean. The pics on the website are probably from 10 years ago. The layout is all correct but the condition is way off.
Those cool little cottages you see on the website are crammed into a normal size frontyard. They don't look so cozy when you're standing outside. I was glad we booked the cathedral room. Except you don't know that there are 2 other TINY rooms they rent out in the house. Closet like things. So, its not just you and your host for breakfast. In our case they had families of 4 in both rooms. We were lucky the families were nice people and equally as disappointed as us. Except I think they only paid $100 for their closets per day. Our cost of $270/night was just wrong.
The good part is it's really just across the street from the beach. Yes you do have to walk down a path and across some driftwood at the beach edge but it's maybe 2-3 min. there. Did I mention you may not have a parking place? Seems everytime we came back we had to park somewhere else. Oh and forget about that Spa, Workshop, Healing arts stuff. The handwritten note to contact Natasha for a massage was it. Natasha is one of the kids there BTW. I sure hope the rest of the B&B's there are really B&B's but this one is NOT.

We never actually got to stay in this location.

We called Solwood and booked our stay on Tuesday for our weekend getaway.

In the morning of our departure date, one lady called us and told us they overbooked us! Besides overbooking, they even got the wrong date!

So I guess I should consider myself lucky, cause if they never overbooked us, we would not have a place to stay anyway.

Solwood did find us an alternative accommodation, but at a higher price with no kitchenette at this new location.