I was really looking forward to my holiday in this hotel because I had already visited it a few years previously and had formed a positive impression.
I had not been well and cancelled a holiday in the South of France in favour of this hotel as I was looking for some peace and quiet. This was a big mistake. I spoke several times to one of the owners who assured me that I would have the rest that I was looking for. I was encouraged to take a 6 days cure which was far more expensive than what I normally paid for the same type of treatment in other hotels and although the treatments were more "personalised" than in many spas, the result was to say the least most unspectacular.
However, my biggest complaint was the fact that I could not sleep. As soon as I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon there was a Rock Celtic concert that went on until 11h00 and was so loud that I could not hear my television, even with the windows closed. When I finally got to sleep after half an hour the burglar alarm went off right outside my door, there was no little hallway between the room and the corridor and the impact was not only startling but rather frightening. I rang the reception but there was no-one there, only a recorded message telling you who to contact in an emergency. I went downstairs to find out if there was in fact a fire but there was no-one about so I decided to go back to bed. It was then that I discovered that I could not sleep with my window open - my small room was at the top of the house and even in Brittany it gets stuffy sometimes in August - because this Relais et Silence hotel overlooks a discotheque organised to alleviate the boredom of young people until 4 in the morning. You might expect that at 04h00 you could open your windows and take out your earplugs but unfortunately the "disco bus" which takes home the young people in various stages of drunkeness and disarray does not arrive until 06h00 and they are left to their own noisy devices for two hours within earshot of the Relais et Silence hotel. If you are not a light sleeper this might not bother you of course but I do think that the hotel could have warned me about this as I stipulated that I needed some peace and quiet.
A further problem which stopped me from sleeping was that the bed seemed to slope in the middle. Towards the end of my stay my back was so painful that I could hardly walk. I have never had a problem with a bed in my life in any hotel or elsewhere so it took me a while to comprehend that in fact the mattress needed turning. One of the owners took me to the osteopath and once the mattress had been turned I was quite comfortable. I do think it appalling however that this should have happened at all.
On a positive note the room was very pretty with a nice balcony but due to the intermittent rain I could not sit on the chair as it was always wet. On one occasion, however, there was a storm and when I returned to my room in the afternoon I found my suitcase and other articles completely drenched where the cleaning lady had left the window open. I also found oil running down the hinge of my door which smelled horrible but ladies that cleaned my floor were not very helpful. It is not very pleasant to have to be always complaining on holiday and although most of the staff tried to put things right these problems should not have occurred in a four star hotel and I found it very stressful. In any decent hotel in the UK some gesture of compensation would have been made but although I received apologies no reduction was ever proposed.
There is a very attractive garden and a state of the art swimming pool. The food was mostly very good and nicely served but one of the best things about the hotel was the other guests. They were among the nicest people I have ever met in a hotel of all nationalities, French, English, German, Belgian etc. Their friendliness helped compensate for what was really a big disappointment for me especially as it was expensive and I arrived home exhausted.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC