The Manor House Hotel And Golf Club - Castle Combe, United Kingdom     

We wanted somewhere very special to stay for two nights where we could have a nice birthday celebration meal in wonderful surroundings. After visiting the Manor's website and reading reviews on Trip Advisor we thought we had chosen well. Sadly, this was not the case... Our room was fine, although it didn't have a view as we were not located in the main building - and we hadn't been made aware of this until we arrived. The bathroom was the main feature really - a fabulous wet-room style shower and a spa bath, under floor heating, fibre optic lighting, and a T.V. Cleanliness was not a 100% - our first observation was the badly stained cushions adorning the bed. The dining experience was definitely not what we had expected. The service was very pleasant but a number of basics were missing - no ice in the water jug, no butter with the bread rolls - and one of the main courses was amazingly poor; we were offered a replacement but the occasion was spoilt. Breakfast in our room was no improvement. The toast and danish we had ordered were missing from our tray so we telephoned room service and they were duly delivered - dry and unpalatable - and with no cutlery. Not quite throwing the towel in we ordered sandwiches in the quaint lounge area in the afternoon. The wrong order arrived ten minutes later. We pointed this out and it was duly replaced by a second wrong order. Then we gave in and we ate out for the rest of our stay! There's a limit to how many times you want to have to point out that something isn't right - especially when you are there to celebrate a special occasion. Incidentally, the Manor take the trouble of asking you the reason for your stay when you book; we had thought this was a nice touch. Maybe we just got unlucky.