The Bakery Restaurant with Rooms

A very bizarre stay. I booked one night at The Bakery Rooms as we were attending a wedding nearby. When we arrived, the check-in process was a bit amateur (I don't think they even asked my name or to prove my ID) but the room was fine, it was only for one night, so whatever. We arrived back from the wedding at around 10.30pm, used our key card to go into our room and... all our stuff was gone. Someone else's bags were in there and there was another bed set up. Confused, we rang the number taped to the restaurant door (which is closed) and had to wake up one of the staff to come and help us. Staff member comes to meet us. She's adamant that she had a Whatsapp conversation with me asking permission to swap rooms with a guest who had accessibility needs (we had a ground floor room, she wanted to move us up to a first floor room). She showed me the Whatsapp conversation with someone saved as "Hotel Guest". It goes without saying, she hadn't been talking to me. She hadn't even asked this person to confirm their name before moving out stuff - without our knowledge or permission - to another room. She was apologetic but we were really annoyed. It seems the new owners have no concept about how to run a hotel or B&B - and you definitely can't run one over Whatsapp! We are also fortunate that we didn't walk in on any hotel guests staying in "our room" as I'm sure having strangers burst in while asleep would have been scary for them. We made it our new room. Nothing was lost or missing, but I was disappointed that we weren't even offered a partial or full refund for their own mistake. (The new room was basic but fine, clean, but there was no hand soap in bathroom and no milk for the tea and coffee making facilities. These are pretty basic things). We then read some recent reviews and realised that other guests also had similar weird experiences staying here. It seems the new owners are piggy-backing off the old owners' success and have no clue what they're doing. The reviews also made us decide to skip breakfast the next day - instead, we went to the tea rooms across the road for tea and cake in the morning. I would avoid staying here unless it's one night and you have low expectations.

I'm not quite sure where to start!! We had 4 nights here, what an odd experience! We arrived hungry, only to be told that the restaurant was closed and there was no bar menu either because the new chef hadn't got a menu organised yet. Luckily the pub across the road had delicious food. Our room was fine except for there being no window, just French doors out onto the fire escape. This made the room very stuffy. We couldn't have the doors open, firstly because anyone could have got into the room, and secondly because the guttering had come loose and rain had soaked the wooden doorframe which swelled up and it was stuck shut! So it was a stuffy night. It rained again and we woke up to a very soggy carpet where it had come under the door. The proprietor promptly gave us a new room downstairs which was really nice and even had a little patio with table and chairs. However we found out that someone else had been given our old room without the problem being fixed! The breakfast was delicious but there was no menu, and no selection of anything out to choose from. All we were offered was a full English. The breakfast lady bimbled about in her own time and at one point, seconds after I asked for some apple juice, she wandered in with her arms folded and stood watching out the front door!! She was very apologetic when I reminded her though!! The proprietor was a genuinely lovely guy but very scatty and always having some kind of dilemma! On our last evening the food was finally available and a fair few people were in. We chose a burger from the bar menu which was overcooked and sadly very mediocre. While we were in the bar, my husband had to keep getting up to let people in because the door kept clicking shut and the proprietor was nowhere to be seen and even admitted that he'd forgotten these people had booked!! The only corkscrew had got lost so people had to wait until it was found before they could have their wine. Overall I'd say this is a perfectly acceptable place to stay if you're just after one night, but any longer than that be prepared for a very surreal experience!!

We had 4 rooms at the bakery for a family wedding nearby. Selection of family and double rooms. Each was very comfortable and suited our needs perfectly. Breakfast was great. Everyone was was very pleasant and made us feel most welcome. Thank you.