Stayed at the Waterhall Country House for one night before my pilot medical at Gatwick. Found the stay both pleasant and friendly, had a perfect nights sleep, a great breakfast and felt as refreshed as I could have. The location is brilliant for Gatwick, and the staff were excellent.

I am in the process of planning another trip to Jersey, Channel Islands, for my husband myself and elderly mother and as usual have had a look at Waterhalls latest! So I thought it was about time I left a comment on our stays, we always use Waterhall, when going from Gatwick, because not only is it so close but the services offered make, in our case our holidays more enjoyable and much easier especially when you have an elderly relative to cater for the ground floor rooms particularly useful. We are ensured of a good start to our break when we get to Waterhall. The rooms are excellent, clean, airy, beautifully decorated, breakfast is excellent, service by the owners and their staff is second to none and no reasonable request is denied, always friendly and polite, the whole ambience is warm and friendly. We leave our car, take our bags and the holiday begins! Now, I must go and get Jersey sorted.

Offers of Assistance….no just call the AA.


After staying at this Country House a few years ago and receiving excellent service, it was the natural choice to use this place again. I had not read the previous review dated 18th October 2007 about “a very unlucky stay” and damage to the owners vehicle before using this facility. I now wish I had.

I returned 8th March 2008 from a week in Las Vegas with friends, after a 10.5 hour flight and an expected 3 hour drive back home the last thing I expected was to have problems with my car.

When I arrived on Thursday 28th February 2008, it was mid afternoon when I parked the car at the car park. I was told that the car would still be in the same place when we returned and gave the keys to the owner. The rooms and breakfast at the house were good and we left the following morning.

On returning from our Holiday we found that a note had been placed on the front door of the house explaining that the owners were out but they had left the keys inside for us. The house has a keypad code system and we were given the code a week ago, along with numerous other guests. Who knows when the code was last changed?? The key code was not difficult to guess. It would have been very easy to gain access to the house and the keys in a short space of time.

When we had retrieved the keys I noticed that my car was not in the position I had parked it and that it had been moved and turned around. My first thought was that they had been helpful in doing this…that is until I tried to start the car to put the luggage in the boot (it had been parked tight up against a tree). The engine would not turn over and I looked at the indicators and realised that whoever had moved the car, did so with the lights on…..leaving them on and so causing a flat battery.

We returned to the house and contacted the owner, Dave, who was less than helpful, he suggested calling the AA!!!! He did apologise but only after suggesting that it was my fault for leaving the lights on!! Remember that I drove up in broad daylight and that they had moved my car.
I am thankfully a member of the AA but surely his first suggestion should have been, I’ll come back and try and jump start the car for you. I have now, as a consequence of their actions lost my no claims with the AA. We also had to endure a wait of nearly an hour before the AA arrived (I’m thankful that it wasn’t longer) in the cold of my car as I had no power to turn on the heating. This meant that we had been delayed by nearly 2 hours when we finally set off from the house.

We had paid £39 each for the stay at the house and then £40 (£20 each way) in taxis to Gatwick and this service is nowhere near the level that any of us expected.

I work in the retail industry and if I treated customers the way I was treated I wouldn’t be in my position for very long. Please think very carefully about booking this venue, there are other alternatives and neither my friends nor I would want you to face the same predicament that we did. We thought that this proved good value for money and in a secure location, this is not the case.

I am a separate member of the 'Knight of Newport' party who left a previous review, but as I had a bad experience of my own at Waterhall I felt compelled to share it with other travellers.

We had used this establishment for both its B&B and parking facilities in 2002 so had no problems re-booking for a week-long trip to the US in early March 2008.

The first thing that we realised had changed since our previous stay was the fact that it is now under different management and that transport to the airport was no longer provided, which meant we incurred an additional £15 taxi cost. This wasn't clearly stated on the website so could surprise returning guests such as ourselves.

Had this been the only issue we could have lived with it as the B&B accommodation itself is still of a good standard.

However, this certainly wasn't the only problem. When we returned from the airport (at the time we had informed the owners that we would be there) we found a note on the door to say that they had gone out and to let ourselves in using the code we had been provided with the previous week. I don't think this is particularly security conscious because this code must be known to hundreds of guests - the owner told us he didn't think it hadn't been changed since our last stay!

We collected our keys and when we went to our car, we saw that it had been moved further up the car park and was facing the other way - we had left the car with the boot facing outwards so we could easily remove our luggage but now the boot-end was parked tightly up against a fence.

Then we tried to start the car, but found that the battery was completely dead - and immediately saw that the lights had been left on which caused the flat battery. At the same time, our friends had discovered that their car had been damaged (as described in the previous review).

As neither vehicle had jump leads we telephoned the owner Dave for assistance, and he asked were we in the AA so we could call someone out. I would have expected his initial reaction to be to offer to return to help out - he did so eventually but only after we had told him about the problems with both cars.

He also questioned whether it was actually him who left the lights on - but as we arrived in broad daylight and as previously mentioned had left the car parked in a completely different place, he and we knew it wasn't us. I didn't appreciate my concerns to be questioned in such a manner and he was in my opinion trying to deny responsibility. He did then, however, apologise 'if' it had been his fault.

Fortunately we were with the AA so were able to call them out - but to wait in a freezing cold car park in the rain having just sat through an 11-hour flight wasn't the end to the holiday we had hoped for.

In terms of my friend's problems with the damaged car, I feel it is misleading to advertise 'CCTV in operation' as this gives the impression that anything that occurs within the car park is monitored. We felt very let down to be told that if the person who caused the damage isn't honest enough to own up to it there is nothing that the owners can do to help us. The owner actually told me over the phone that this is what we have car insurance for!!! Unbelievable.

My opinion is that if leaving the car there is no safer than leaving it in Tesco car park, as the owner stated, then this should be made crystal clear to guests leaving cars there and no charge for parking should be made - as with a Tesco car park!

While we will not let our experience of the parking facilities at this establishment spoil an otherwise wonderful holiday, it wasn't the return home that we had expected and are disappointed with the lack of care of vehicles.

I just wanted to make people aware that you really do leave your car here at your own risk, and I would not use this B&B again or recommend it to others.