The Sundowner Hotel

If the car park had actually been a car park and not a junk yard, if the "hotel and restaurant" actually had a restaurant instead of what looked like tables piled high with left overs from a jumble sale, if the bar had actually been a bar then we could perhaps have overlooked being met at the door by a somewhat inebriated gentleman who apologised for having fallen asleep and not hearing the doorbell. He took us to our room, which surprisingly was clean and had a comfortable bed but little else. One cup was provided alongside the kettle in spite of the fact that we had booked as a couple. Our host repeatedly told us to "mind the step" and to remember to lock the outer door every time we went out. When asked about the restaurant he told us that there were takeaways in the area. We asked where and he said "go down the road, down the road, and bumph! Takeaways". My husband asked what kind of takeaways, were they Indian, Chinese, fish and chips? To which he replied "Takeaways". He then informed us that we were welcome to bring food back to the room and if it got cold we could warm it up in the microwave under the stairs. It was apparently a state of the art microwave because they were posh. There was a TV in our room, strategically placed in front of the dressing table mirror, rendering the latter unusable. The TV itself was fairly useless as it only received news channels. Two other people arrived by van in the outside junk yard, one of whom turned out to be the owner, who was also drunk and swore at the other chap for getting in his way. The view from our bedroom window could have been pleasant were it not for the statue of a dog cocking its leg up against a lamppost and a dead parrot on the picnic table, surrounded by numerous redundant wheelie bins, old car batteries, rabbit hutches, piles of wood and other indiscriminate objects. To our right there was a stack of pigeon coops, complete with pigeons.

The room was clean and comfortable the bathroom looked brand new. Staff friendly but a little unorganised. Don’t think any areas down stairs are in use but we just wanted to stay in the room anyway. For the price I was pleasantly surprised and would definitely stay again.