The official map of Portree was more amusing that it might have appeared at first sight…
Category: UK
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Isle of Skye – Fairy Glen
These photos are from Liam’s stag week a few years ago, the time allowed by the coronavirus means that this is the first time I’ve uploaded most of these. Fairy Glen is named for no other reason than it has a mystical feel to it and it’s a peaceful site, topped off by Castle Ewan. This is just a rock formation and has never been a castle, but it does look like that from afar and we’re visible in the photos after climbing to the top of it.
There are some spirals on the ground with coins and stones in the centre of them, although it seems that the local tourist authorities aren’t keen on this recent innovation. The whole surroundings are though quite magical, there’s a touch of the Hobbit about the landscapes.
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Lincoln – Holiday Inn Express City Centre
Not that it’s particularly entertaining content (although to be fair, a lot of my content isn’t) but I think it’s important for me to post about how helpful hotels were for stays that I didn’t get to make during late March and early April due to the coronavirus. Every one of those hotels must be suffering and worried about its staff, so I’m going to try and get back to all of them later this year so at least none of them lose my booking. It’s not going to be much, but the hospitality industry is going to need some considerable help, not just from the Government, but also from customers returning.
Having posted about the other twelve or so hotels that offered me refunds for stays in late March and early April (I have another wave of hotels to contact for stays after that, but it’s too early yet for that), there was only one which didn’t reply at all to my e-mail. Which was this one, the Holiday Inn Express Lincoln, for a stay that had already completed (or not completed in this case). My follow-up e-mail to the hotel was promptly acknowledged by the management company, which is very much appreciated, but they’ve said they don’t have access to the reservation bookings.
I have a feeling that IHG are processing refunds and are just taking some time about doing it, which is entirely understandable and they’re not the only ones doing that. I can’t imagine many customers will mind that it’s taking some time, but hotels are going to have to tell them that otherwise they’ll have a wave of chargeback claims and the lost custom will perhaps start to bite later in the year.
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Croydon – Ibis Styles
I’ve stayed here before, so I do know something about this hotel and it’s one I like, albeit it’s a bit quirky. But Ibis Styles are allowed to be quirky. Anyway, this is another post in my growing series of ‘hotels that refunded my non-refundable booking because of the coronavirus’. The hotel is now closed for April when I would have been going and although they might not have been thrilled to refund, they’ve done so and so that’s another location I’ll make sure that I visit in the future to make up for their loss.
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Bristol – Hampton by Hilton
Hotels.com have since informed me that the hotel has withdrawn the refund option. Will repost about this….
The third in my series of hotels that I never got to stay at due to the coronavirus….. But, I like to post about positive experiences and this hotel refunded my non-refundable booking that I had made via hotels.com. This is particularly positive as I hadn’t yet contacted this hotel, so it was an entirely pro-active refund. I will try to ensure that I visit the hotel in the future, they’ve made this process entirely painless.
Reassuringly professional.
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Lincoln – Premier Inn Lincoln City Centre
I posted about how helpful Ibis Bristol Temple Meads were with regards to cancelling a future hotel booking which was now impossible due to the Coronavirus. So, I should mention positively the efficiency of Premier Inn Lincoln City Centre who did the same with my otherwise non-refundable booking. Premier Inn only postponed stays initially, but then they allowed a cancellation of everything and my money was refunded swiftly. Hopefully I’ll get back to Lincoln soon.
It gives me lots of reassurance in the professionalism of Ibis and Premier Inn.
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Chesterfield – Chesterfield Museum and Art Gallery
This charming museum and art gallery in Chesterfield is free of charge and I was fortunate that I had time to visit as it’s opening hours are a little limited and they only just overlapped with when I was in the town.
One of the main rooms of the museum, which was formerly the town’s library until a new building was constructed in the 1980s.
There are some books for sale here, but what’s more exciting is that this is an original cart from when the building was used as a library. Yes, I found this exciting. Sorry.
This is a longcase clock which was given to Chesterfield Council by Mrs A Hadfield, who slightly complexly was the mother of Councillor Hadfield and the donation was in honour of her late husband Walter. A member of the museum staff notes on their web-site that this is the loudest of all the exhibits they have, as well as being just a little erratic in terms of its time-keeping.
Apparently this is a ground paddle and is a mechanism which is located next to the top gate of a lock. It is from Chesterfield Canal and it allowed boaters (or whatever they’re called) to fill the lock with water.
Something quite unique, these are glass tubes owned by George Stephenson, the Father of the Railways. Their function was for cucumbers to grow straight, a simple little piece of technology.
These are from the local packaging company, Robinsons, who are still trading today and who made all of the Smarties tubes, amongst many other things.
This is the largest item in the museum’s collection and one which has some heritage. It’s from the Church of St Mary and All Saints over the road, which is also known as the Crooked Spire. It’s a windlass which was used during the church’s construction to lift heavy weights and people would have had to walk within in to get the wheel to turn. This was left in the church tower for many centuries and it was only removed in 1947 when they needed to make space to fit a new set of bells.
I hadn’t realised this, but the information board by these coins mentions that in the late sixteenth century the country started to run out of currency. So, local traders produced their own coins, or trade tokens, including the town’s Angel Inn.
All in all, a rather lovely museum and the staff there were welcoming and keen to engage. I also thought that it was a particularly well curated museum, as sometimes provincial museums can focus on a few topics which have no relation to each other, whereas here there was a complete history of the town with few obvious gaps other than perhaps their coverage of the World Wars. I fear that these sort of museums are very vulnerable to budget cuts, but hopefully it will continue for many more years to come.
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Bristol – Ibis Bristol Temple Meads
I can’t write much about this hotel, as this was a cancelled stay due to the Coronavirus. But, I wanted to note how helpful the hotel was in what must be trying circumstances for them. I paid for this booking, which was for the two days after the now cancelled Rambers General Council, primarily through loyalty points and the helpful hotel staff member wanted to check with Accor that I could get the points back if they processed the cancellation. They confirmed I could and I have within just a couple of hours got them back in my account.
Swift, efficient and polite – an impressive response time from Accor.
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London – Ibis Budget London City Airport
I stayed at this hotel near to London City airport following my flight back with British Airways from Florence. For a time it looked like my flight would be cancelled, or at best, it would have arrived too late to land at London City and so would have been diverted to Southend Airport. I sent the hotel an e-mail asking if I could check-in late and they responded quickly saying that they’d do the check-in there and then on-line, so I could just pick up my keycard which they had put under the desk for the night porter. All very professional.
I got there in good time in the end, thanks to British Airways, and the receptionist was the friendly and helpful staff member who had sent the e-mail to me. This is a relatively cheap hotel, but the welcome seemed authentic and I was pleased with the bargain price of £33 including breakfast. It’s only an eleven-minute walk from London City Airport, so convenient for these late arriving flights.
The room was clean and to brand standard, perfectly sufficient for a one-night stay.
I went down to breakfast and I was the only one there, so at least it was peaceful. There were cereals, pastries, yoghurts and a selection of meats. This was sufficient before my train journey back to Norwich, with the orange juice and coffee being helpful as well, particularly the coffee for that little energy burst. When I checked-out at around 09:00 the breakfast area had around thirty people in, so it was either a coach party or perhaps a flight load of passengers who were on one of the cancelled flights from the previous day from London City airport. I imagine that the breakfast experience for them wasn’t quite as relaxed as mine was.
Anyway, I thought I’d have a little look at TripAdvisor to see what people thought about this 81-room hotel and the reviews are quite reasonable. I mentioned above that I walked this in eleven minutes, but some reviews complained it was a long walk, people managed to take 15, 20 and 35 minutes. I don’t know what the one taking 35 minutes was doing.
One person didn’t like their toilet and must have been told to use the one on the ground floor, which isn’t ideal, although certainly isn’t illegal. I don’t like the comparison with easyHotel, which is one of the few hotel chains that I hold in entire contempt. Which might be unfair since I’ve never stayed with them….
“Im sure prisoner’s get better service better breakfast. Rooms more then basic think easyhotel – class customer service. First room toilet didnt work fully booked normaly by law a hotel would have to reacomerdate u somewhere else at there cost. Not here so no toilet facility apart from going down three floors in lift.”
Another guest was pleased:
“One member of staff in particular was aggressive and combative”.
I never manage to find aggressive staff in hotels (well, bar that one in Los Angeles a few years ago, which I must write about at some point), but it’d certainly liven the check-in experience up.
“In my 36 years alive on this earth, this hotel has to be in the top 3 worst stays ever, in fact i would have rather have slept in my car and woke up and jumped in the Thames had i known it was that bad.”
Hmmm, sounds like they didn’t find this their perfect stay….
Another guest complained that the place was “full of builders” and there are lots of problems with noise, which I can imagine must be a problem at weekends. Having lived near to this hotel a few years ago, the area isn’t the most salubrious, but I thought that the staff did well to manage everything. To be honest, I was just pleased to be able to get back to London before the curfew at City Airport and get to the hotel.
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Chesterfield – Church of St Mary and All Saints (The Crooked Spire)
For reasons I haven’t yet worked out, the cover image on these blog pages is automatically cropped, but I’m dealing with that.
For this post, it kind of makes sense to have the whole photo, so here’s the church including its twisted spire. There’s a local poem about this church which is:
“Whichever way you turn your eye,
It always seems to be awry.
Pray can you tell the reason why?
The only reason known of weight,
Is that the thing was never straight”.
The church is also known as the Crooked Spire church, for reasons which are self-evident. The problem occurred when the spire was being built as there was a shortage of trained men due to the Black Death, and a mistake was made by using unseasoned wood and also too much lead. The spire twisted over the centuries, which isn’t entirely uncommon in churches from this period, and it was nearly taken down in the early nineteenth century. Wiser heads prevailed and the church is today one of the most infamous in the area because of its quirky spire.
There also can’t be many football teams who have their nickname derived from the local church, but Chesterfield FC do, they are often called the Spireites. They were offering tours of the church tower until relatively recently, but it has been decided that it is currently unsafe to do so.
I don’t like grave stones being reused in this manner, they’re losing their relevance like this and slowly being destroyed. This is inside the church’s porch.
Looking towards the altar of the thirteenth century medieval church, which was comprehensively restored (or mauled about, depending on your view of Victorian architects) by George Gilbert Scott in 1843.
Looking back towards the west end of the church which mostly dates to the period of Henry VII, they’ve built a shop area at the back (the shop is recent, that wasn’t a Tudor installation….).
The intricately carved pulpit dates back to 1620. A large fire in the church started near to this pulpit in 1961, but although this fine wooden structure survived, the church’s grand old Snetzler organ was destroyed.
The Foljambe family tombs in the Lady Chapel.
The stained glass in St. Catherine’s Chapel.
