When we arrived there were no other cars in the car park. A member of staff was loitering in the conservatory at the front of the building, talking on her mobile phone in a foreign language. She didn't bother terminating her phone conversation when we gave her our name and grunted at us to follow her to a first floor bedroom, then abruptly left. The room was freezing so we went back downstairs, where the staff member was still talking on her phone, and asked for an alternative. She huffed and puffed a little, still talking on her phone, then showed us to another freezing room, at which point I suggested that we would cancel our reservation if no warmer room could be found. She then grudgingly led us to large, spacious and very warm room, which she obviously hadn't wanted to give us because an extra (camping style) bed had been put in there to make it a 'family' room.

We couldn't fault the temperature in the third room and it was clean enough but sadly there were plenty of other things that weren't right. The bathroom main light didn't work at all and we had to rely on the shaving light over the very cracked sink. The seal around the bath was cracked and very mouldy and the shower screen had come out of its runner so didn't slide across properly. There were damp patches on the ceiling and the bathroom heater didn't work at all. In the morning we attempted a shower - the water was hot enough but the shower head was so caked with limescale that it only came out in a dribble.

The beds were very bouncy but the bedding was at least clean. One of the bedside lamps couldn't be used though because the lampshade fitting had broken and the lampshade rested directly against the bulb, therefore being a fire risk. The bedside lamp on my side of the bed had no on/off switch so I had to get out of bed and unplug it when I wanted to turn it off.

The hotel was very quiet - probably because we were the only guests - and we did sleep okay. We had opted for a 'no breakfast' room rate because we knew we were going to have a very large lunch later in the day. When we went down to check out at 8.45am, our suspicions that we were the only guests were confirmed by a totally empty breakfast room. Not only were there no other guests around but also not a single member of staff in sight. We looked all over the ground floor of the building and shouted out but nobody else was there. The door of the reception area had a telephone number on it 'to contact us if we are not here'. We phoned it and got an answering machine. I left a message saying we were checking out and leaving our keys in reception. I asked for a return call to confirm that credit card payment had been taken but at the time of writing this review I haven't had one.

Not the best overnight stay we've had in a very long time. In fact, in the years my partner and I have been together this has definitely been the most disappointing B&B we've been to.