rooms vary in size and quality so ensure you get a good room. some rooms face the road others on the sea. Rooms allow too much sun in in the morning. staff painful.

Beautiful hotel and rooms. Gorgeoys location. Outstanding service Food amazing. Attention o detail incomparable.

We were met by the efficient Ricardo, and felt at ease straight away. As you walk down through the property, you get the wonderful breeze from the sea, finally reaching the sea front as you walk out to the blue sea & sky and the white surf of the ocean.

We'd tried to get in here for a few years, but have always failed on availability, so glad we got in between Xmas & new year.

For me, the service was excellent - laid back, but actually very well organised. Shane the GM was very hands-on, serving at breakfast, but ensuring that as you came down for breakfast, housekeeping were quickly sorting your room so you went back and everything was refreshed. A good touch I thought.

All food is included, and we thought excellent. Just very good, not fussy food with wholesome ingredients. don't mess with it too much! Wine was included, but we wanted one off the "extras" list, and had to pay, but we didn't have a problem with this.

They very kindly take you into town and collect you again, which was handy due to an injury to my husband, or you can walk to and from town, which at 5k is a manageable meander.

For us, the setting was by far the major plus for us. Lovely sunsets; you can people watch to your hearts content; or you can go the 2 mins and head to the beach! A G&T watching the sun go down listening to the roar of the ocean...nothing like it.

We stayed in room 5, and although not to our tastes, was a lovely room, it was a bit noisy, but it was during the Xmas break, so the area is packed out with locals and tourists - we understood this. Was lovely to have your own pool, but it was so cold we just used it to cool our boiling feet from the walk back from town!

Food & drink wise, we thought we got value for money - all the mini bar, drinks, and food were included apart from cigars & certain wines on an extensive list - there was great selection of both food and drink, and one morning we asked if they any back bacon. They didn't have any , but someone popped out and got us some (even though we said the streaky bacon was fine!). You felt like everyone worked to make sure you had a great stay - both enjoyable & memorable. (I appreciate it was only bacon...)

Staff are all great - always making sure you have what you want without being intrusive - feels like they run a tight, close knit ship and we felt that shone through.

We headed on our way to Franschoek with heavy hearts, but a visit to their sister hotel Le Residence made us think that we would stay with the same company again, and we are definitely planning our next stay back at Birkenhead House.

Having recently stayed at Royal Malewane we were expecting Birkenhead to be equally spectacular as it has the same owners. Althought the terraced area at the back of the hotel does have a spectacular view the rest of the hotel looks out over a charmless suburb and is so close to the other buildings that you have to keep many of the shutters closed in the rooms for privacy.

There is no air conditioning, the rooms are on the small side and are decorated in a random and somewhat dated fashion. The food is ok but the menu is fixed and did not change during our stay which made the dining experience quite repetitive. Given the fact that the hotel was so small one felt on top of other guests and it could be a chore to find a comfortable place to sit outside overlooking the water.

On the plus side, the view from the terrace is gorgeous and the Staff does make a huge effort. They set up tables on the terrace for breakfast and are extremely accomodating about special requests. There are fabulous beach walks and a nearby nature reserve where you can go hiking. If one wants to visit Hermanus then this is probably the place to stay but with hindsight we might have skipped this stop altogether as we didn't find the town charming and the beaches although beautiful were quite crowded.