The Gables B&B

Had a lovely relaxed stay here . The hosts and staff were great . Lovely breakfast . Great location . Loved picton .

We are travelling throughout New Zealand and have pre-booked accommodation every couple of days. On Thursday 7th March we took the ferry from North Island to South Island and booked into The Gables B&B for 2 nights. Things didn’t get off to a great start when the lady who met us stated we couldn’t park our car on site, only to later retract this and ‘allow’ us to park for one night only. We were shown to our room, a largish room with a double bed covered in 11 pillows and cushions and a single bed also covered in cushions and pillows. Much fuss was made of the offer of a small glass of wine from the Marlborough area. Our bathroom was across the landing, which we were unable to lock. Our room had no water or water glasses, no tea tray, no TV (we understand this is considered a historic B&B) and no bin. However, the whole room and house smelt really strongly of lilies, the smell was overpowering. We were tired so went to bed reasonably early, so were awake at 6.00am the following morning. My husband went to the communal lounge and dining room to get some tea at about 7.00am as we were gasping for a drink and there was nothing in the room! He was promptly told off by the host/proprietor who stated there was no access to this communal facility until 8.00am. He was then accused of waking up other guests. At breakfast the host then accused a Danish couple of breaking a window in a very aggressive manner, however, they had shown us a picture of the window hanging off on one hinge with a gale blowing through. It clearly needed maintenance. We had seen enough and decided to leave immediately, so packed up and left. We did not request a refund for the night we didn’t stay, but our accommodation provider did raise this only to be refused. The host stated we should have told him of the issues we had before leaving. We disagree, the whole experience, coupled with the stench from the lilies, meant we just wanted to get away.

Good central location but this bnb is just really poor value for money. By contrast we paid $40/night less to stay in a fabulous 5* hotel in Wellington for the previous 2 nights, with every mod con and luxury (,pool, sauna, huge clean room, privacy, proper tv, wifi, great kitchenette etc) By contrast there's little privacy here with the bedroom facing directly onto the mechanic's back yard and next door's bnb cabin quite easy to hear what's going on. It's kind of cute, as in "how many cushions can we pile on the bed to look good?" but the issue is where to put them when you actually want to lie down? Bathroom was weirdly cramped and toilet would probably be unusable for larger guests. Our stay was ok but it's way over-priced and is punching well above its weight.