On the outside, this hotel looks good - superb location and a grand outside appearance. We have often admired it from a distance on previous visits to Bowness.

My Husband and I had suffered with the flooding in Glos and had been without water for a week. We were desparate for a nice romantic night away where we could have a shower and some comfort.
Alas this was not to be found with this hotel! Perhaps the issue was we got one of the last rooms available, the ones they keep for only the desparate....

Our room was at the end of the hotel - the further you walk from reception, the shabbier it all becomes. Peeling wallpaper, threadbare carpet, in the hall on the way to the room.
The room itself was a good size and light, but I can honestly say it was one of the worst rooms I have ever stayed in:
- 2 small, hard little beds.
- One sheet and one 'blanket' to keep you warm. We were freezing at night. The blanket was scratchy and of the type you get when you are a child on a trip with school.
- The furniture was extremely poor quality - mdf, tatty, cheap
- Mould on the ceiling
- The curtains were dusty, musty and faded. When we closed one at night several moths flew out, and circled around the (cracked) lightshade. I am not kidding.

The bathroom was ok - newly tiled, and the shower was good (but then, we hadn't had one for a week). The 'free' shampoo was limited and poor quality - 2 small sachets to do 2 adults for a night and a morning.

For this we paid £115 for the room. Even £50 would have felt like a rip off with this hotel.

It's such a shame, as we hear it is family owned - and it;s nice to support small businesses vs chains. I just hope this was not a reflection of their other rooms and we were just unlucky.

We stayed for 2 nights at The Hydro Hotel. Initially we were unimpressed as our rooms weren't ready even though we were there at checking in time plus we weren't given full details about using the leisure facilities. For example we went to use the swimming pool and jacuzzi and we weren't told we needed a code to get into the building theywere in, so one of us had to go back to reception to get the code, after that we weren't told we needed a £1 for the lockers.

The pool and jacuzzi were gorgeous. We were very impressed with them.

The bedrooms were pleasant - though the lighting could have been brighter.

The breakfasts were lovely and filling and an excellent amount of items to choose from. Also good service from foreign waiters/waiteress who are clearly trying to do their best with a limited amount of english.

We didn't have evening meal as it was £24.95 for a 5 course meal - and we didn't want 5 courses!!

All in all we had a lovely, relaxing stay.

I got marred in the windermere hydro in september, and I honestly couldn't recommend it highly enough.

The location is superb, the views over lake windermere are breathtaking to say the least. It's well worth paying a bit more for a 'room with a view'

I found the standard of service to be beyond reproach, the staff always friendly, polite and helpful - it seems a little detail but it really made our stay complete. The manager & staff went out of their way to make our stay as enjoyable as possible

Over the course of the weekend we had not one bad meal, and in terms of value for money, food and drink was excellent. Our room was amazing ( 4 poster bed, seperate sitting room, and a little sun room - it was the honeymmon suite though).

We had a superb time at the Hydro, and have very fond memories of the place - we will most definetly be back!

Gordon and Sarah Turner

fantastic weekend, perfect hotel in excellent location in bowness, stunning views, canot falter anything at all. we stayed for 2 nights in the murder mystery weekend package and had so much fun. all the guests and staff were friendly and polite and always willing to help. the food was extremely nice and plenty of wondeful choices. we payed a tiny bit extra to stay in a lake view room, which was very spacious, clean and well presented, with a lovely corner bath and shower with plenty of hot water. .Will definitely be returning to this hotel, hopefully for another murder mystery or another event that the hotell will hold in the future. thanks to everyone for making it a weekend to remember. debbie and andrew