Well, it's still early in the evening on our first (and only!) night, but I felt compelled to write this review while I still retain some sense of humor!

As I lie here on our not-so-comfortable double bed (actually two single beds pushed together!) I'm wondering what it is that concerns me the most. Is it the annoying tv that actually has no reception about 80% of the time? Or maybe the frequent sounds of our noisy hosts walking and talking loudly in the hall beside our door (which is actually substantially quieter now their children have gone to bed!)? No, the worst feature has to be the unbearable smell emanating from the bathroom! Honestly, it's so disgustingly nauseating that we have reorted to packing the abundant cushions (truly, the only abundant thing in the room....no spare blankets, pillows or space in here!) around the base of the bathroom door in a vain effort to keep the smell out of the bedroom! God help me when my self-discipline finally fails and I have to answer the call of nature. Peeing through the open window is starting to seem like a legitimate alternative to ever entering that room again!

But wait! As I write the owners baby has begun crying loudly. Perhaps he or she accidentally found their way into our bathroom? This night just gets better and better!

I have to say something positive here. We did just have a very memorable dinner in Blackheath (certainly not from the restaurant adjoining our accommodation, judging by the smell that has permeated the hallway....I may never eat Indian food again!

So, to summarize. Blackheath, good. This place, very, very bad. I just thank God we didn't pay anything like the exorbitant tariff others who have reviewed this place before us did!

The one night we spent at Tails of Blackheath was a comi-tragedy of inadequacy from beginning to end. I’ll try to describe the most salient points as briefly as possible:
• I had booked online several weeks before the trip using the property's website and had given a check-in time, but when we arrived the staff were hard to find and appeared somewhat surprised to have any guests.
• During check-in several of them fretted away over the computer for 10 minutesor more as we stood there with our bags. Maybe it was new software, but they appeared to have no idea how to use it.
• We’d booked bay window rooms at an additional price and they gave us standard rooms which are small and have minimal natural light
• Turns out they only have one bay room (there were 4 of us – two couples), even though the booking site allowed me to book two
• They gave us the one bay room they did have at this point (did they withhold it initially so we wouldn’t do a room comparison and spot that one room was inferior despite paying for two superior rooms?)
• When I asked for a refund on the extra I’d paid for the other room the older guy, who I assume is the manager or the head of the family, said I’d have to take it up with the booking agency
• The rooms had no heating, but they gave us smallish heaters when we asked for them.
• No DVD players, but they might have given us those too if we had asked
• Very, very dusty surfaces, including thickly accumulated dust along the edges of the room that I could see from the bed
• One water glass
• Showers were OK and the hot water didn’t run out, and the beds were quite comfortable

‘Breakfast’ the next morning was so bad it was funny and then just sad because they were so utterly hopeless. The high/low lights of our $180 per night breakfast were:
• Couldn’t find any staff to start with
• Table was very dusty, including plates and cutlery, and one plate was really quite dirty
• The guy who served us initially had poor English and was struggling to understand us.
• He offered us white toast (“bread toast”) with eggs “boiled or fried” with bacon or sausage, and then, “omelette”.
• He took breakfast order for one of us and wandered off.
• He came back and took tea and coffee orders, clearly not retaining any information. I foolishly asked if they had Earl Grey tea – it was evident that if I ended up getting any tea it wouldn’t be Earl Grey.
• There was then a series of guys turning up with plates of food we hadn’t ordered.
• My partner’s omelette was a single fried egg, agitated before it set.
• Our friend’s fried eggs and bacon had the same egg-configuration, only with the yolk in one place (and I suspect it was the same fried egg they’d tried to give me TWICE even though I asked for boiled eggs). His bacon arrived 5 mins later.
• My ‘boiled’ eggs arrive and turned out to be poached, sort of – they were not pleasant.
• Our friend who made the smart choice of toast fared best, but even she found a half eaten mini-pack of Vegemite in the condiments bowel.
• Salt and pepper shakers were empty
• The coffees arrived with milk in them – not what was asked for.
• There were coffee grinds and spills over the cups.
• On the plus side, they did keep the toast coming – albeit under-toasted white sliced bread toast. And they gave us large glasses of fruit juice – albeit bog standard tetra-pak style juice.


Our friends tried to reassure me about Tails because I felt guilty at having booked it, but they did concede it was the worst place they had ever stayed in, and they are very well-travelled. None of us are used to staying in fancy places or want to snipe about problems, and I hate to give such a negative review – but this place really was dreadful. The Indian family (family? We didn’t see any women, just a sequence of disorientated guys) who run it really had no idea whatsoever. It was like they had never experienced the sorts of standards Australians or Western travellers or, ANY travellers for that matter, would expect. They run an Indian restaurant in the same building which we can only assume is run far, far more efficiently and supports the entire business.

I want to say to these guys for the sake of their business – please consider hiring someone professional to manage the bed and breakfast side of things. And I want to say to anyone reading this, DO NOT STAY HERE unless you discover that something significant has changed since we stayed (October 2010).

My husband and I spent a 50th birthday night here recently. Booked on line, the place sounded very promising - a heritage Mountains guesthouse, with luxury appointments - just lovely. The reality very different. We had booked a 'Superior Queen room with bay window' and on arrival were shown three poky, dark rooms with a back door - no 'bay window in sight'. We settled into one (very reluctantly, as the staff member seemed adamant there was no bay window room to be had). When we noticed the rumpled state of the bed linen ( looking suspiciously as thought the bed had simply been re-made - and badly - after the last guests, without washing the linen) we insisted on being given another room and were - finally - shown to a larger room, with, you guessed it, the bay window! This room seemed more satisfactory - it had natural light through the window, was larger, and at least had clean linen - so we stayed. The staff member had assured us that there was milk in the fridge for tea/coffee - when I checked, it turned out to be an OPENED long life milk carton! Rubbish bin in bathroom not emptied from previous guests. Dirt on carpet not vacuumed. Promised bath robes in cupboard yielded one robe only that smelt suspiciously of perfume or after shave.The 'luxury toiletries' were nothing different from any hotel / guesthouse (except they were mismatched). The staff have no idea of hospitality, efficiency, cleanliness or hygiene.
In all a most disappointing experience especially given the rather high tariff for what we got. We enjoyed ourselves despite it all by taking ourselves out to one of Blackheath's lovely restaurants for dinner, and then to Mount Victoria's heritage independent cinema for a film - and by having a good laugh at the absurdity of it all.
However the Blue Mountains has an abundance of lovely, classy guesthouses, so don't waste your money on this one.

We stayed here for my husbands birthday suprise. I had chosen the guesthouse on the basis of the description provided and with the reasoning that for the tariff charged, it must be top rate! The tariff, in hindsight was outrageous! I booked via wotif, paying a tariff of $220 for what seemed to be luxury accommodation with a glowing description (presumably provided by yourselves). I have just checked Tails own website and discovered that your rate for next Saturday night is $150.00!

The description provided is “king size bed and luxury appointments”. Where, I wonder were the “luxury appointments”? Surely not the cheap light-fittings, inferior door locks, missing slippers, or the “luxury robes” provided (2 x mismatched and poor quality robes), or the rather small bath towels? Surely it couldn’t be the cheap plastic shower head, inferior vanity basin or the lack of bathroom heating (unforgivable in the Blue Mountains in winter!) I also take issue with their description of “personal toiletries selection” which implies a range as would be common practice in most establishments in this price range. Tails selection consisted of cheap soap, shampoo and conditioner. There were no tissues, body lotion, make-up remover pads, cotton buds etc etc. The cleanliness was also a disappointment. Our shower recess was quite frankly pink with mould, architraves were dusty and the verandah could do with a good sweep. We have just returned from a 5 week trip to Europe and the tariff was greater than we paid in London, Andorra or Barcelona and the standard was vastly inferior!
Absolutely avoid!