The Osborne Hotel in Newcastle, let me show you it (so you don't have to go there!!!)
Got back from holiday yesterday, and it was a terrific one; just me, the bike, and millions of Scottish sheep and cows (and the occasional B&B landlord). How to live like a hermit in Scotland for seven days...but I was able to do exactly what I wanted, whenever I wanted. Which involved an insane amount of cycling, because apart from having to see and do everything my tour guide had advised, there were some extras I needed to see (ring of standing stones, or the remains of the oldest church in Scotland, or a so-called otter pool without otters), and they all constituted at least a 15 mile detour. Whenever possible in the rain. Average cycling per day 35-45 miles, and the detailed report is to follow (so I don't forget, because for a place where 'nothing ever happens' I did manage to experience an insane amount, and I didn't even see the meteor shower!).
As the title suggest, this post is about my stay in the Osborne Hotel, and it was a very unfortunate end to an otherwise excellent holiday. There is nothing about this hotel that I can say that would shed ANY positive light on it; it was grim, extremely dirty (more on this later) with incompetent, unhelpful staff. The only good thing was that I managed to get a 'large whisky' (Glenmorangie) for 2.50 instead of five pounds, by acting shocked when I got charged a fiver for 'only one whisky'.
This was little compensation for THE PUBIC HAIR I FOUND IN MY BED, hidden between the sheets, or the hairs in the soap dish in the shower, or the mould on the strips next to the shower door, or the brown sheen in the toilet, or the water stain on the ceiling of the shower, or the shabbiness and disgusting state of the hotel in general.
Pictorial evidence not for the faint-hearted:
The toilet:
The shower:
The mould:
And the floor I did not want to tread without flip-flops (something I've never had to do before)
But with the following notice at the check-in desk, I really should have seen it coming!
The worst thing was, that when I mentioned having found that hair in my bed, the receptionist just stared at me and said nothing. Two second silence, before she tried again to make me pay five pounds for the whisky. When I asked her if she wasn't going to react at all, she just said it was a matter for the chambermaid and the manager, and that she'd make a note and get the manager to call me on Tuesday. No apology, no hint of embarrassment, no sign that this was anything out of the ordinary.
I know that 45 pounds is a low rate these days, but even for that price, I would expect something a bit more civilised than what I found here.
Eww.
As the title suggest, this post is about my stay in the Osborne Hotel, and it was a very unfortunate end to an otherwise excellent holiday. There is nothing about this hotel that I can say that would shed ANY positive light on it; it was grim, extremely dirty (more on this later) with incompetent, unhelpful staff. The only good thing was that I managed to get a 'large whisky' (Glenmorangie) for 2.50 instead of five pounds, by acting shocked when I got charged a fiver for 'only one whisky'.
This was little compensation for THE PUBIC HAIR I FOUND IN MY BED, hidden between the sheets, or the hairs in the soap dish in the shower, or the mould on the strips next to the shower door, or the brown sheen in the toilet, or the water stain on the ceiling of the shower, or the shabbiness and disgusting state of the hotel in general.
Pictorial evidence not for the faint-hearted:
The toilet:
The shower:
The mould:
And the floor I did not want to tread without flip-flops (something I've never had to do before)
But with the following notice at the check-in desk, I really should have seen it coming!
The worst thing was, that when I mentioned having found that hair in my bed, the receptionist just stared at me and said nothing. Two second silence, before she tried again to make me pay five pounds for the whisky. When I asked her if she wasn't going to react at all, she just said it was a matter for the chambermaid and the manager, and that she'd make a note and get the manager to call me on Tuesday. No apology, no hint of embarrassment, no sign that this was anything out of the ordinary.
I know that 45 pounds is a low rate these days, but even for that price, I would expect something a bit more civilised than what I found here.
Eww.