I stayed at the King’s Head for 3 nights (Sat / Sun / Mon) in September 2009. I liked it, but it wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for. It's clearly kept with care and love, but my room was a little more basic than I'd hoped and the pub was not appealing to me.
Location: Excellent!! Right in the center of Abergavenny, close to restaurants, shops, etc. It’s on the main street of town, which is pretty narrow. If you’re sensitive to noise, I’d advise avoiding the front rooms. (A group of noisy drunks woke me and everybody else at 3am Sunday.) You can park on the street on weekends & overnight in front of the hotel, but if you’re planning to stay past 9am (I think) on a weekday, you need to move the car to a car park a block or two away.
Rooms: I upgraded to a room with a double bed for 75 pounds. Pluses: clean and fresh; comfy bed; good bedside reading lights; nice tray of tea-making supplies; free wifi (I think I had to ask for a password). Minuses: small (see pictures); TV very small and didn’t get the Welsh-language channel S4C (surprising and disappointing to me, since their website is quite bilingual); exceptionally tiny shower stall (really, really tiny, with no place to put your shampoo and soap).
Food: Breakfast was cooked to order and tasty, with all the standard sausage and eggs, etc. It was served in the hotel’s restaurant. I didn’t eat dinner there, so I can’t comment. FYI the restaurant was closed on Sunday night, as were almost all the other spots in town; I finally found dinner at the Abergavenny Coliseum, a Weatherspoons pub not far from the hotel.
Public areas: This was the biggest disappointment to me, in that unlike other reviewers, I didn’t get any sense of friendly vibe from the pub, which you walk through on the way to the stairs to the rooms. Quite the contrary. I had the sense every time I passed through that literally everybody in the (smallish) room knew everybody else, and that it would have been really awkward for me (solo woman) to drop in for a pint. Some pubs I'm fine going to alone; this one, not. FYI for the mobility impaired: I didn’t see an elevator up to the guest rooms (it would be surprising if there was one, in such an old building), and the stairs are not completely level and even, though they are tightly carpeted.
- Kings Head Abergavenny
