The Falcon Hotel - Bromyard, United Kingdom     

What a refreshing change from the corporate chains! I had the fortune to be doing some business locally and stayed here for a night. Delightful, friendly staff and good food. Rooms are individual and furnished in the style of the period and a bit quirky but really comfortable and welcoming. Prices are good, free car park and quiet location although in the main street. I'd definitely stay again.

My stay at The Falcon was a most memorable one. Forget the rooms, which are basic, fugal and tired, and the breakfast, which was very unremarkable. Forget that £50.00 for a single is expensive, which it is, I think. This place has drama, comedy and the air of the eccentric – in the form of its owners, John and Sylvia (I think, they could so easily have been Basil and Sybil). Imagine Sylvia swilling her red wine as she serves her customers as if blindfolded and playing a game of Tail on the Donkey; the air was heightened with excitement and the unexpected: she gave my drink to another customer and my change to someone else and did not even stop for breath as she put the world to right with such passion, she made Spike Milligan’s performances look positively tranquil. It was not enough that John had gone out to tell off the 4x4 driver whom had run over his sign on the pavement twice, Sylvia had to do it too and with far greater pomp and ceremony: she flow at the man as if on a broomstick and verbally boxed his ears! I have no doubt that this experience was so affective that that 4x4 is For Sale on a forecourt somewhere and the driver is now driving around in a smart car. As if nothing had happen, there she was again, swilling her wine and telling her audience that they’d been awarded two stars; well, they will have once the hair dryers are installed in all the rooms… and that they were so easily nearly three stars! It will not do the town harm to have a two star hotel: so she informed us, in words to that effect In the morning, whilst telling me of an arsonist attack on the hotel, Sylvia was in her element as water poured through the ceiling into the restaurant from the shower room above. She gave a unique rendition of something that looked like singing in the rain – using mops, towels and chairs, as her dancing partners! I thought she was going to explode. The setting was melodramatic as she chastised the occupant of the offending shower room with a performance John Cleese would have been proud to give. It turned out to be a plumbing fault and the poor chastised guest, just an innocent victim. John, the Sybil of this relationship gives depth to the ambiance. Listen out for his laugh; it is, perhaps, his Sybilism.