I really don’t understand the raving reviews on this B&B – I’m not saying it is bad but it is certainly not as fantastic as the reviews suggest.
We stayed there for 8 nights and while our room was twee (The Martha in the Painted Lady). The décor was not sumptuous, as advertised on the website. I was not impressed by having a bath in the bedroom (some might disagree) but it did make the room steamy. There was a shower room, the towel rail was broken so nowhere to put towels and only half of the ceiling was painted. There was air-conditioning in the room was badly fitted and the gaps filled with cardboard, so overall hardly luxurious.
We had to cross the drive each morning to go to breakfast in the Belfry Inn. Every day this was scrambled eggs, day 1 with biscuits, day 2 with hash browns, day 3 with hash browns mixed in, day 4 with some red stuff (possibly peppers) added, day 5 bacon bits added and so the list went on. The toaster took over 5 minutes and even then the bread was not brown. There was always a bowl of melon and every other day some bananas.
The owner was slightly odd while not quite Basil Fawlty he had a distinct lean towards Sparky Griswold from the National Lampoon films. There was a definite twitch!! On the first evening when neither of our bedside lights worked he came immediately to sort it out but did stress that it certainly shouldn’t have happened as he had himself changed the bulbs – it turned out that the fuses had blown. A wedding was held there on the Saturday and he was in a panic all of Friday, turning the dining room into an additional bedroom. He must have been making a mint from this because everyone other than the wedding party and guests were just an inconvenience.
Although there was a café/bar there were no ashtrays for the smokers. The owner provided one on the back porch and this was not emptied for the duration of our stay.
After reading previous reviews I was really looking forward to staying at the Belfry and all in all it was pleasant but in order to meet the expectations gained from the Belfry’s website and reviews improvements are certainly needed.







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