The Old Vicarage Hotel - Guest House - Bridgwater, United Kingdom     

The price suggested the hotel would be a cut above the average - but it is at best ordinary - and the idea of service peculiar. We were put in an annex and given a long list of things that we should NOT do. The room was of a high standard - but we only got to see the historic cafe and old part of the hotel at breakfast. The garden was locked in the evening (July). The restaurant was closed on the Sunday. Breakfast did not even come with a pot of tea - tea bag and warm water was the only option. Probably advisable to go elsewhere. It is a wonderful old building but the staff seemed to want you to stay in your room and lock everything up and bolt it all up by 10.30pm.

Avoid at all costs!! This hotel is an utter shambles - period. In all of my years of travelling, by some substantial margin I have never encountered a more diabolical or shoddily-run place on the planet than this hotel. It's a real horror show. Where do you begin? The staff are downright rude, inefficient and unhelpful. The security measures, petty rules and red tape in force border on the paranoid, which all round gives one the general unwelcoming atmosphere here of - a prison. Everywhere you turn there is a locked door. Even the 'reception' requires talking to an intercom via a steel bolted door. Welcome to Alcatraz – Bridgwater style! It is pure purgatory and stupidly pricey. The rooms are like shoe-boxes, all damp, run-down and musty. This place has not been decorated for years. I would gladly not have spent even one night in this place. Two words describe it in a nutshell - absolute dump! The room they offered, (the laughably titled ‘character’ room overlooking a graveyard no less) which according to the brochure is supposed to be one of their best, is pokey, filthy and decrepit. Nothing worked in there, and everything was tacky and old. The bed was hard as nails and the linen was dirty and smelt horribly mouldy. I was covered in flea-bites by the morning. How they have the audacity to charge £105 for this room per the card rate is really quite astonishing. The downstairs area of the hotel is disgusting as well, and stinks of stale meat - a bovine smell that is more reminiscent of a slaughterhouse than a hostelry. So as you can imagine, we avoided having breakfast there...Being poisoned would have capped it all off. Thankfully though, out of all this squalor, there was one saving grace, namely, that we hurriedly checked out and got to stay the next night at the excellent Travelodge just down the road (M5 – right next to J24). This was a wholly different class. Half the price, good-sized rooms, immaculately clean, and a friendly service with a smile. Word of advice in summary – If you are looking for a place overnight en route to Cornwall or Devon, or need to be in this area, DO NOT STAY at the Old Vicarage at any price. It is simply - The Hotel From Hell!