The Crown Guest House

We arrived quite late in the evening, but had a warm welcome at the bar and were shown to our spacious room. Plenty parking spaces in street outside. The en-suite had a huge stand alone bath and separate shower. The bed was comfortable and room clean. Breakfast was very tasty and we were made to feel incredibly welcome by the owner. A stay here includes breakfast and given the quality of the room was a great deal. The whole place has a friendly feel to it and we’ll return to stay again and try Sunday meal and a drink by the fire.

The room was lovely, bright and spacious. It was very clean and tidy. The bathroom was also very clean, shower was great and the water was a good temperature. Food was also great. Staff were very friendly and helpful. We would happily return.

We stayed in one of the 'last remaining' cottages - though we never saw another person staying in any of the others. On arriving we had to enter the pub and say we were here and a very nice chap said the cottages were just down the road and would meet us there (all fine). We'd also noticed on the door a notice saying the kitchen was closed Mon and Tue - if we had known this in advance we would NOT have stayed here - one of the benefits was having an on-site restaurant and we were only staying for 3 nights, so this was annoying. When we got to where the cottages are located there was no private parking but I knew this because of the other reviews and we did get parked right outside so this was fine. The website says the cottages are next to a river. Well if they mean a river that is totally hidden from view by a very high wall then that could be correct. You can't see or hear the river. On entry to the cottages it felt nice and warm in there. We entered and popped our cases in the respective rooms. All ok. Here are the nice things about the cottages: - I liked that there was little bottles of shampoo/body wash and little soaps in the bathrooms - There was plenty of kitchen utensils and plates etc and saucepans (which was good, seeing as the kitchen was closed) ) - when the restaurant was open we did eat there and the burgers were excellent. Ok now a few things that weren't ideal really - The cheap laminate flooring in need of replacement - bits coming up and little chips taken out of it. - In the kitchen diner there was 2 types of different cheap laminate flooring! Why?! Why not just re-do the whole room?!! - Living room had a couple of random chairs and a tub chair that looked badly chewed/scratched by dogs. Why was it even in there?! Take it to the tip! - Living room had a well worn small sheepskin rug which did not look clean and this was the only rug to cover the cheap laminate flooring. If you have children who want to play on the floor then don't come here - floor was dirty too. A large persian rug would make ALL the difference here - come on, - Wifi was so poor our phones refused to use it, and we just used our own 4G/5G. The TV is not connected to the wifi so there is no netflix/iplayer etc. - If you try and get something to connect to the wifi it just won't. - Cheap duvets on the beds - really like they have lived a long life. Floppy and lifeless. Bedding had lots of dog hair on it - or hair at least. Was it cleaned? - NO hot water. You can fiddle with the taps a bit in the sink and this sometimes gave hot water for a couple of mins but on the whole something is very wrong with that combi boiler or the infrastructure. - The cottages are a couple of meters away from the East Coast Mainline and trains shake the whole house, and go past ALL THE TIME, including through the night. - the heating did not like to switch off despite radiators being at the snowflake so we had the windows open a lot which made the train noise even wors