The Punchbowl Inn, Thorne

 

Thorne - The Punchbowl Inn 

Punchbowl inn, Field Side, Thorne, Doncaster DN8 4BE

July 2022

 

Look up The Punchbowl Inn on Google, and you’ll see it has a rating of four stars. That, I think, is an indication of just how much you shouldn’t trust internet ratings; I may be in a minority, but I think there’s a strong case for compulsory assessment of accommodation businesses, like Visit England used to do. On Google it also says ‘Staff required to disinfect surfaces between visits’. Bear that in mind when reading the following.

***

Viv and I travel to the Doncaster area at least once a year; I sponsor a trolleybus at the museum there, somewhat in memory of my late father, who was a transport fanatic. Normally we stay at the Premier Inn in the city centre, but this time it couldn’t fit us in; looking around the area, I booked us into The Punchbowl Inn in Thorne for the two nights we wanted. 

I did know Thorne a bit beforehand; I used to work for BMW, which has a distribution depot there, and have passed through on walks on at least one occasion in the past. It is in what might be termed an ‘area of regeneration’; Hatfield Colliery, the last deep level coal mine in the UK, was one of the local employers, and closed as recently as 2015. I also know Yorkshire well, and the differences between north and south; I lived in Leeds and then Bradford for a total of over ten years. I wasn’t expecting a luxury experience, but, with the website promoting weddings and functions, I expected decent levels of comfort and cleanliness. I was significantly disappointed.

Approaching the hotel from the station I noted that one of the large brick gate posts had been recently demolished, presumably by an errant vehicle. Other brickwork in the car park also seemed to be falling apart. Looking up at the building, I saw faded and peeling paintwork and missing roof tiles:

  

The image on the website has clearly been subjected to some photoshopping.

***

Entering the hotel, I was surprised at how quiet it was. A small function was possibly taking place in one area, but there was no hustle of waiters or sign of busy managers. We checked in at the bar, before being shown to our room, up some stairs which clearly needed vacuuming. I realised I hadn’t been given or offered a receipt other than the one for my credit card payment; I would normally expect a proper invoice.

***

Our room was a curious shape, and seemed to have been laid out in the 1980s - there was a small TV off to one side, a tiny open unit for hanging clothes,  a Corby taking up space where a proper wardrobe could go. It was light, with net-curtained windows, only one of which would open - and that was difficult to close, because it was over a tiny dressing table and the handle swung out when it opened. 

The net curtains were less clean than I would have hoped for, given the images on the website, and the main curtains didn’t fit, they were way too narrow. Lighting was by chandeliers, closer inspection of which revealed that the management might have begun to realise why such style of lights aren’t a good idea in a hotel - they need a lot of cleaning.  

The floor was covered with a fairly tough and seemingly clean carpet, the style being not unusual for hotel room floors as they do get a lot of wear - people aren’t wearing carpet slippers when they are staying away from home. 

Tea and coffee making necessities were in one corner; two cups, plenty of tea bags and coffee, a few milk cartons, but only one spoon and one saucer. There were no tumblers either  in the room or the ensuite. 

In the ensuite I noted that the catch to lock the door was missing, the window blind had fallen off the wall, and the extractor fan wasn’t working. Investigation of this revealed that the isolator switch was off, turning it on solved the problem. The fan itself was partly blocked by an accumulation of dust; that Google reference to disinfecting between visits struck me as rather creative. These fans are something that a hotel inspector would check, and not cleaning them is a sure sign that a business hasn’t understood what is expected.

***

There aren’t many places to eat in Thorne, so, unusually for us, we ate in the restaurant that evening. The menus were confusing: a chalkboard, and a menu for pizzas, childrens meals, and heaven knows what. Viv ordered a curry and expected it to come with rice, but got chips; she should have been offered the choice, for someone else did get rice. 

 The food was plentiful, the vegetables somewhat overcooked for my taste, but at the price - £11.99 for  a large meal - it was good value. Drinks were a reasonable price, with real ale from the Old Mill Brewery in nearby Snaith properly served - the management clearly knows how to look after quality beer. We ate our meals in the orangery extension on the front of the bar, the tables seemed clean although the windowsills at one end were home to a few dead insects that were there both evenings - clearly the area hadn’t been properly cleaned during the intervening day. 

The second day of our visit being a Saturday, I had half expected a wedding to be taking place, but there wasn’t one - while we were there we never saw more than perhaps ten or fifteen customers, and one staff member behind the bar; with the extension and function rooms the business could perhaps cope with a hundred or more. 

***

Back in our room for the night I noticed there was no wifi, and no information brochure. 4G broadband was slow; this is a major drawback for any hotel today. I couldn’t even check the hotel website for breakfast times, so had to ask at the bar.   

The bed, a key element of the accommodation service that a guest is buying, sadly showed up some significant inadequacies of understanding in terms of what a hotel guest is looking for. The headboard was fixed to the wall, a gap therefore opened up between it and the bed when you sat up to watch TV. This was not aided by providing each guest with just a single, rather tired pillow, and overnight comfort was far from adequate due to the bed having a very flimsy, thin mattress, probably an open coil type. I did check it and it was at least clean, it looked to be quite new, but cheap mattresses don’t last long in an accommodation business - one overweight guest, or a couple indulging in hours of bedtime athletics, will weaken the springs and reduce the support available for later guests. A mattress topper might improve comfort, and I was surprised that no mattress cover had been deployed: people will do messy things in hotel rooms sometimes, and experienced hosts will know that it's best to take precautions. 

As well as the uncomfortable mattress, there was traffic noise from the main road outside that impaired our sleep; we could have shut the window, but it was July and rather warm to sleep without an open window. There might have been less noise if we had been able to open the other window, which faced the side of the building, rather than the road. 

In the morning we found the shower worked just as they used to in the eighties: there was no thermostatic control, we had to balance the taps to get the right temperature. If someone else in the building ran some hot water it went cold; if you compensated for this, it would later run very hot, when the other person stopped! The shower hose had had a new head fitted recently, but it was the wrong shape for the bracket that was supposed to hold it up; positioning the head for a shower was something of a game. There was no grab rail by the bath to help someone get in or out, and I don’t think the base of the bath had been treated to reduce slips.

The basin in the ensuite was, I must say, of a good size; often hotel rooms have tiny ones, and it's impossible to shave properly in them. A shaver light and socket and a mirror were above the basin, full marks for good design there; there was also a good size window, pity about the aforementioned blind. Next door to the Punchbowl Inn is Thorne police station, I wasn’t arrested for indecent exposure so I guess the obscured glass in the window prevents too much from being seen from outside.

The tiles in the bathroom looked quite new, and the grout was clean although cracked in a few places, as was the sealant around the bath. 

Breakfast was a strange experience. There were no menus on the tables, the waitress merely asked us what we would like for breakfast, offering various cooked options. On the second day we did ask about cereal, and there was some at the back of the restaurant - we should have been guided to that on our first morning. We weren’t offered juice either; we asked for it on the second morning, and thought we were told that the waitress would bring some, but it never appeared. 

The breakfasts themselves were of good quality - hot, and with seemingly good ingredients. Drinks, though, were a bit strange; I asked for tea, on the first morning I was given a pot of it with two teabags, with a mug and jug of milk; on the second day I think I must have looked like I needed waking up, for there were four teabags in my teapot, with enough water for just one mug of tea. They do go for strong tea in Yorkshire, but that struck me as overdoing it - and successful hospitality businesses will have strict controls on what constitutes any item on their menu, a pot of tea ordered on one day will be the same as one on the next.

***

Arriving back at our room on the Saturday afternoon we found that it had not been serviced. I don’t know if that was a covid thing or it is just an expectation that guests will tidy their own rooms, but I did feel that we should have been told. 

***

We had arrived at The Punchbowl Inn mid afternoon on a Friday, and left at ten on the following Sunday morning. The stair carpet that had needed vacuuming when we arrived still needed it on the Sunday; on closer inspection, one of the items of grime that required removal there was a dead fly. Viv - having some sight issues and therefore being more sensitive to touch - also pointed out that the bannister rail and newel posts on the stairs were sticky, and had been all three days. In fact, we never saw a cleaner, or evidence of any cleaning, at any time in our forty-two hour stay there. So much for ‘Staff required to disinfect surfaces between visits’.

***

I don’t know anything about the circumstances of the business behind The Punchbowl Inn. I am sure they have suffered greatly during lockdowns, and may be short of capital to invest in remedying some of the faults we found - such as the exterior paintwork, or the fittings in the rooms. I do wonder whether some of the staff involved are inexperienced in running an accommodation business; many people take over a BnB or hotel when they move out of a different type of work, and often don’t understand a few key points about hoteliery:

• The standards of cleanliness in a hotel need to be far above those one might accept at home - any grime at home is yours, whereas any grime in a hotel is who knows what;

• Visible faults will make guests question what is going on in areas they can’t see - dead flies left for days on restaurant window sills show cleaning isn’t being done, what about in the kitchen?

• A slick website will attract customers, but if you fail to deliver to the standards you seem to promise you will be slammed in reviews.

I think those running The Punchbowl Inn may fall into this category. There’s a few things they could do to improve their delivery that will cost little:

• Work out whether they are making a profit, and what they need to do to make enough profit;

• Sleep in rooms in the hotel, record your experiences honestly, and consider what can be done to improve them;

• Stay in competitor businesses, and see what they offer, and at what price;

• Improve attention to detail significantly; have checklists for everything - cleaning, meal contents, manager’s daily checks, and make sure that staff deliver what is on the list, and no more;

• Fix minor issues - like the lock catches on ensuites; 

• Consider mattress covers, toppers and new pillows, two per guest;

• Have neat, clear menus for the restaurant, breakfast menus on the table with information as to what is available;

• Provide room information folders;

• Get the wifi working (the website indicates that free wifi is available);

• Tell guests if rooms aren’t to be serviced;

• Look honestly at your website and consider whether it might set expectations higher than what you can deliver - if so, determine what can be done to narrow the gap between expectation and reality;

• Provide proper receipts for the accomodation;

• Develop training plans for all staff and see that they get the training they need (which can be in house, on-the-job);

• Develop a plan to upgrade the accommodation - perhaps to remove the Corbys and rejig things, or strip the rooms to plumbing and bare floors and work up from there - so that, when funds are available, you can make progress.

When I was sitting in the restaurant waiting for my meal on the second night of our stay I did think to check on the hygiene score for The Punchbowl Inn, on the Doncaster council website: it was actually the Free Press that showed that it scored three out of five - that means ‘generally satisfactory’. That may be, but I didn’t like looking at the dead moth that had been on the windowsill for at least the preceding twenty four hours.

***

There are people saying that a major recession is coming, with interest rates up at ‘normal’ levels (5% or so), and businesses that are struggling will either have to improve their act or go under. I do hope that The Punchbowl Inn manages the former, I’d like to consider staying there again in a year or two’s time.  

 

The Valley Hotel, Ironbridge

 

Ironbridge - Best Western Valley Hotel 

Buildwas Rd, Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, Telford TF8 7DW

April 2022

 

Viv and I had a four-night stay in Ironbridge last week; rather than risk the chance of choosing an eccentric or noisy pub, we opted to go for a hotel, and the only one in the village is the Best Western Valley Hotel.

Arriving there by taxi was almost thrilling, approaching the village down the steep roads down the valley side seemed to take us away from the modern world, into a place more interesting, historical and scenic. The hotel itself though was not terribly welcoming. The approach to the reception door was down some very steep steps; fortunately a handrail was provided, and needed - we both used it every time we came and went.

On the window of the door there was a sign formed of adhesive lettering requesting, or advising, guests to wear a face mask in all hotel public areas. I’m not of the view that face masks should be banned - if people are nervous they are free to wear whatever they like - but it is now surely well known that good ventilation and cleanliness are key to reducing the spread of covid, and the consequences of being infected are, in any event, relatively minor for even the quite elderly unless they have other illnesses. A sign up asking me to wear a face mask is, to me, akin to a bouncer eyeing me up on entry and saying something like ‘I don’t like the way you look’: it's the very opposite of what I expect from a hotel, it’s not welcoming. 

Reception - and restaurant staff at The Valley were wearing masks in public places, but I felt sorry for them. They no doubt realised the pointlessness of it, and how a hotel full of people with covered faces is not a place that many people feel they can relax.

***

The reception area was rather dated, dark furnishings and decor, so it was no surprise when, after climbing the rather curious staircase to find our room that we opened the door to see a spacious, but very 1980s, hotel room. Unfortunately, not only was the style rather of that era, some of the furnishings may well have been that old. The mattress was at least clean, and looked quite new, but after a night's sleep on it I decided it was the thinnest I have slept on since a zed-bed many years ago. The pillows were shot to bits, resting your head on one resulted in the filling moving away from the underside of your head, leaving it resting solely on the mattress.

The carpet was aged but clean, ditto the curtains (which could have come from a vintage shop) and pelmet (yuk). The shades on the lamps either side of the bed did not match. There was, however, and much to my surprise, a small balcony with a pair of outdoor chairs and a table, accessible from a door that opened easily; unfortunately the security chain on this was broken, I had to be careful to make sure it was locked whenever we left the room. The balcony itself was adequate, although sitting out there and looking back at the room you didn’t have to try hard to see the inadequate state of the exterior paintwork of the building. 

A check around revealed all the basics were there - two (rather small) chairs, a proper wardrobe (with doors) and drawers (no panicking about what the cleaners will think of my underwear), full length mirror, TV (strangely, hiding in the corner of the room where the drawn curtains would obscure the margin of the screen), power points close to the bed head, a great digital clock that even I, with my -4.5 eyesight, could see in the dark, hospitality tray (including mineral water and glasses), hairdryer, and, in the ensuite, a shaver socket. There was even a phone on one side of the bed, it's ages since I stayed in a hotel room with a phone, very 1980s! I was surprised that there was no information folder, and hence no way of contemplating dinner in the restaurant other than enquiring about the menu at reception. In the ensuite all was clean, and, as we later found, the over bath shower was powerful, and hot water plentiful, but the controls were not easy to use - something that should have been communicated in an information folder. There was, though, some poor finishing, especially around the shower screen, seemingly half a tube of silicone having been dolloped around it to stop leaks. 

I mentioned the cleaners, a big plus was that the rooms were serviced daily: there was none of the ’we’re not servicing rooms to avoid spreading covid’ nonsense that some hotels have inflicted upon the paying public in recent times. (Many of the paying public were all too aware it was just a way to cut back on staff, and nothing to do with covid).

One expectation for many guests that wouldn’t be met was wi-fi. There didn’t seem to be any public wi-fi in the hotel at all. We did have an opening window (as well as the balcony door), but somehow a builder had messed it up though, it didn’t open very much because it bashed against the rail around the balcony! Phone signal was ok, marginally better on the balcony. 

Lighting in the room was largely by means of fluorescent bulbs: it was adequate, only just. There was no light over either mirror in the bedroom, and only one - on the left - for the bathroom mirror. I’m not sure if I shaved the right side of my face properly at all during my stay, but no-one said anything: perhaps it's a tradition at The Valley, that all male residents should grow right-side-only beards during their stay.

The ensuite had been designed, or fitted out, by someone who doesn’t wash their face very often, for there was an awkward shelf fitted just above the basin. It was big enough to get in the way when washing, but not big enough to take the washbag of a couple staying away from home for a few nights. The washbag had to stay in the bedroom.

One major omission in the ensuite was a handrail (or perhaps two) to hold on to while getting into the bath to use the over-bath shower: I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of guests grabbing the flimsy towel rail instead, and this giving way, perhaps resulting in injury. Another disappointment was the standard of loo roll provided: soft loo roll should surely be provided in anything above a basic hotel, and that supplied was more than a little on the rough side.

I do wonder whether we were the first guests to stay in the room for a while: at the start of our stay the bath drained very slowly, but it freed up after we had had a couple of showers. This should have been picked up by the cleaners, for a slow draining bath or shower tray in a hotel is a potential cause of much damage and inconvenience if a guest should forget they’ve left the taps running.

I was a little surprised to be given just one card key for our room, but, unlike many hotels, there would have been no need for a second unless we both wanted to go out, separately (which we didn’t): the lighting in the room was not controlled by a card. Heating was reliable, of the underfloor variety, controlled by a proper thermostat like the one I’m used to at home. No aircon or fan was running through the night while we slept, if there is one good thing about 1980s hotel room design the heating and ventilation must be it! Also, I was rather surprised to find that there was no Gideon Bible; some hosts don’t approve, but I’ve never understood why, for a bible can give reassurance to those who might feel a little troubled away from home. 

***

When lying in bed with the TV on a few more shortcomings became apparent. As well as the actual position of the TV relative to the curtains, the remote seemed to operate in a very strange fashion. I had to press the buttons very hard to get it to work at all, and, on multiple occasions, I had to get out of bed and go to the screen to select channels from the channel menu rather than just enter the channel number. For some reason that did not work very well. Further, channels were assigned to different channel numbers on the TV than (I thought) the Freeview standard was. Again, an in-room information folder might have explained the vagaries of the television. For all that, the picture was always good, and the volume could be turned up to be suitably audible at all times; I am not sure if those in adjoining rooms might have heard it, but we never heard theirs. Indeed, sound from passageways or other rooms was minimal; the only disturbance we experienced was a (presumed) staff member’s motorcycle arriving in the car park at six a.m. every day, and a delivery van that seemed to come every morning well before 4. (There was a sign on the front door advising delivery drivers to go round the back; surely it would have made sense to have night time deliveries at the front door, away from most of the bedrooms. This was a good, but not the only, example of the sort of idiosyncrasy that I had expected at a Best Western hotel.)  

Another problem that became apparent lying in bed - as well as the poor quality mattress and dreadful pillows - was that the bed was, I think, rather short. It was certainly no bigger than a standard double; I’m five foot ten and my feet reached the bottom. Again, Premier Inn provides large beds, and the management at The Valley Hotel should learn from them - the room was plenty big enough for a king size. In fact, there was something curious about the bed: the divan base was in two halves, and divided crosswise halfway down; the connection between the two halves was not sound, there being a two inch gap between them. This also meant there was two inches of divan at the foot of the bed with no mattress.

There was also a huge expanse of space on the wall, where the modest flat screen TV could have been fitted high and centrally, yet it was hidden off to one side. I suspect the owners were only prepared to pay a minimal amount to the sparks who fitted the screen, so he kept the cable runs as short as possible - surely a false economy.

The view from our room window, or balcony, was rather marred by being overlooked by some modern houses, perhaps affordable housing, that had clearly been built in what was once part of the land belonging to the hotel. These neighbours there weren't terribly noisy, but the houses did somewhat spoil a view of what I had expected to be scenic grounds. (I did also notice that, on the footpath beside the road to the east of the hotel entrance, masses of ivy growing from land seemingly enclosed by these properties, clearly not being controlled or managed by anyone. This may have even been a responsibility of the hotel, and partially blocked footpaths outside a hotel do not a good image make.) 

***

Not being people who like hotel breakfasts - all that politeness around the buffet and keeping a nervous eye on ‘your’ slice of toast going round in the toaster - Viv and I opted to breakfast elsewhere. The first morning we grabbed croissants and coffee at the Co-op - cheap, but basic, with a coffee machine that didn’t want to do a hot chocolate for caffeine-nervous me; on the other mornings we ate at Darby’s, a cafe by the iron bridge that opened at 8 (more or less). Darby’s was pricier than I had expected but still cheaper, for what we wanted, than the hotel would have been, at £10 for a continental and £14 for a cooked. 

We did eat one meal, a dinner, in the hotel restaurant, and, generally, we were impressed - although the prices were not at the budget end of the market (£25 for a steak). The waiting staff were very keen but some clearly lacked experience; the food was generally satisfactory, although my rare steak was somewhat lacking in pinkness. Like many hospitality venues the management is, I suspect, operating with a new team in both kitchen and restaurant, which will give rise to minor issues. I saw the staff working hard and didn’t have the heart to send back my steak, although, pre-covid, I probably would have done.

***

Unlike Premier Inn, Best Western is a franchise: branded hotels will be individual, and guests may actually like this. However, I do think that, for rates well in excess of what you’d pay at a PI, guests are entitled to expect the basic comforts if not more, and bed, pillows and mattress  to be at least up to the PI standard. The Valley Hotel would have worked out around £120 a night for two B&B (£95 a night room only), and there’s no excuse for a thin mattress and knackered pillows at that price. They do indeed offer ‘superior’ rooms, perhaps with better beds, but a comfortable night’s sleep bed is surely a basic expectation, not an extra for those willing to pay perhaps £20 more.

The Valley Hotel is in a good location, just ten minutes walk from Ironbridge centre and in something of a monopoly position, for there is no other large hotel in Ironbridge. It does have a lovely location, good restaurant and keen - if perhaps inexperienced - staff, but for me a decent bed is a must. In the unlikely event that I am ever in Ironbridge again I shall not look forward to sleeping on that sort of bed again, and will require significant reassurance regarding room standards to stay at The Valley Hotel. 

 

Iron Bridge, No Knickers

Ironbridge World Heritage Site, TF8 7JP

April 2022

At the entrance to Disneyland, California - a few thousand miles from Shropshire - there is a sign that reads something like ‘Here you leave today, and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy’. Entering the Ironbridge gorge is a bit like that, leaving the concrete madness of Telford behind as you travel down the narrow, winding roads to the cradle of the industrial revolution. I think that near-time-warp is at the root of many of what I feel to be faults in the World Heritage Site; I’m not sure I like its version of tomorrow, or fantasy.

We travelled down for a few days staying at the Valley Hotel (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) rather expecting to be immersed in the 18th century; much of the time, however, we found ourselves to be all too aware of the twenty-first.

***

The first thing most visitors to Ironbridge do is to go to look at the famous bridge. Impressive it is indeed, constructed in the days when the only means they had to move around large metal parts on land was human-, or animal-, powered. But to get to it you have to walk along narrow pavements beside a busy road; indeed, so busy that, at times, Viv and I had to give up on the idea of conversation. A 20mph speed limit applies to this road, but is widely ignored, as visitors can see from the smiley sign that tells drivers their speed - at least half the vehicles we saw were exceeding 20mph, and a few 30. (Speeding seems to be accepted among the locals; on the way home, our taxi back to the station was doing almost 40mph along The Lloyds and Coalport Road, both subject to a 20mph limit.)

Speeding cars are bad enough, but HGVs use the route too. How on earth large tipper trucks come to be permitted to drive through a UNESCO World Heritage Site is beyond me.

***

The traffic and narrow pavements make it difficult to window shop, which is a shame, for there are many interesting little shops there - antiques and vintage seemingly popular, also an off licence which had whisky from Yorkshire in its window. If it hadn’t been almost £70 a bottle I might have tried some. Pubs there are a plenty, some not so good (The Tontine, right by the bridge, rather reminded me of a pub by the station in a rough area of Leeds I used to have reason to frequent which often looked as if a fight had taken place there the night before) but The Coracle micropub is a definite hit. We ate in the curry house two doors down one night and were able to take draught beer along; a wide range of craft beers was on offer at The Coracle, and the host and customers were all friendly. 

Other food outlets I’d recommend are La Casita - a tapas bar hidden away above another restaurant - and Darbys, good (if a little pricey) for breakfast. Darby’s opens at 8, early enough to provide an alternative to ghastly hotel breakfasts. The chips at the fish and chip shop were good, the pie and fishcake we had less so, perhaps they had been kept warm a little too long. 

Good cuisine is available; there is The Valley Hotel, also The Water Rat just out of town towards Buildwas, past the railway bridge, and The White Hart closer to the village centre. Like many establishments, they’ve all had a tough time with covid, staff may be inexperienced and times are restricted. A lady at The White Hart went to great lengths to show us the dinner menu, only then to have to tell us that they weren’t serving dinner for another hour.

***

It is difficult for retail businesses at the moment: Joe Public is polarised, some still frantic about hygiene, wearing masks and avoiding anyone not wearing one, others are damn glad to see the back of masks, social distancing and plastic screens. If you ask me, too many businesses in Ironbridge were still ‘Covid nervous’, with signs up requesting masks be worn, and containers of hand gel by their entrance. That is perhaps a reflection on their customers; tourists, in particular, at this time of year will not be families, but the retired, perhaps more nervous regarding health matters than under 65’s like me.

Indeed, there were a few rollators and zimmer frames in use by pedestrians around the centre of the town. I’m not sure how they would have got on on some of the side streets and footpaths, for they are steep and steps common; good for photographers and artists maybe, but not for the less mobile. 

I did at first want to go to the museums: at least, Blists Hill Victorian Town and Coalbrookdale Iron Museum. That was until I found out the price: £21.50 each for Blists Hill, and £10 for the Iron Museum. Blists Hill sounds interesting - but for two over sixties (no discounts for age or disability, by the way), £43 is a heck of a lot for perhaps three hours passing the time and no doubt spending money in shops and cafes too). We declined the opportunity to visit either. 

***

A taxi driver told us that Blists Hill was £14 before the pandemic; we weren’t the only ones to have commented on the price to him. Undoubtedly the museums will have lost money during lockdowns, but they can’t just expect people to accept a 50% price increase to compensate: they should have lobbied their MPs to stop lockdown. I also wondered whether the chief execs of the charities running the museums were enjoying the same, or higher, salaries they did three years ago… answers on a postcard please …

The good thing is, you don’t have to pay to see history around Ironbridge, fortunately. As well as the bridge in the centre, to the east of the town, set back from the road but close to the river, we found the Bedlam Iron Furnaces, shelter beneath what I originally took to be a rather stylish petrol station canopy. We weren’t the only tourists there taking photos, but the main use of the car park area seemed to be for locals, heading east out of Ironbridge, to turn their cars round and drive back through again, no doubt having sat nav problems and adding to the traffic overload back by the bridge. We also found some old lime kilns beside the old railway line to Bridgnorth, now a public footpath.

***

More modern industry is evident at the other end of town. Close to Buildwas bridge lie the remains of Ironbridge Power Station, a coal-fired industrial conglomeration that, in its day, generated 1000MW of electricity. The chimney has gone, but there are still a number of former electricity supply buildings on site. The local authorities have eyes on the site for housing, which will overload the local roads still further with traffic. I can’t help feeling that, with the water from the Severn being available for cooling, it might be better kept in industrial use - especially if the old railway (still in place) were used for access. A coal-fired power station might be unacceptable in these times of high electricity costs (due to our enthusiasm for wind power), but why not nuclear, or are the locals - mostly not terribly well off, by the looks of things - quite happy to pay two grand a year for energy? 

The madness of energy policy, and a population that has been conned into thinking that wind power is a good thing (what do you do when the wind isn’t blowing?), reflect a societal failing that is visible elsewhere in Ironbridge. Around 9am on each of three days we made our way along the main road, past the village school: no doubt, I thought, an institution where the young (under 12) children would be taught all about man’s spoiling of the planet, the evils of fossil fuels, and how we should all ‘go green’ to save the planet. They need to talk to their parents: the - quite large - car park opposite the school was always full at these times, with parents dropping off their offspring, no doubt too lazy to indulge in the exercise of a walk themselves, and depriving their children of it. And, from what I saw, the vast majority of the cars were of the old-fashioned, internal combustion engined, variety.

The school itself did display a feature of our times: slogans. Four arches summoned the children to school along the ‘Pathway of Knowledge’ , emphasising the importance of ‘serving the community’. I didn’t understand that sign: did they mean the school was serving the community, or that the children were, or should be? In what way are the powers that be teaching those children that they will ‘serve their community’? All sounds rather too Maoist for me, I’m glad I got through education before school leaders started to think about signs, slogans and mission statements. I felt sorry for the poor kids, how confused they must be.  

***

I’m afraid Ironbridge, or the authorities that run it, doesn’t know what it is. A tourist attraction with museums? Then why have so much traffic going through it? A World Heritage Site? Ditto. A run down, former industrial village being taken over by wealthy retirees looking for a nice quiet cottage by the river? So why promote it to tourists? Why rip off the tourists with exorbitant charges for the museums, which will only encourage them to wander along the narrow pavements and get in the way of the locals who seem to need to drive everywhere if those locals want a tranquil place to live?

Ironbridge seems to epitomise the illusory state of much of the UK economy: on the surface it looks ok, but underneath nothing makes sense, and when, in the future, things get tough (if they haven’t already) the tourists will stop coming and their money will stop rolling in. There’s no sign of any strategic planning that makes any sense: why not close the road through the village to all non-essential traffic, and have electric minibuses ferrying people around, between the museums and a Park and Ride car park that apparently exists in Telford? (I say apparently, in our four nights and three days there, we never once saw a P+R bus). The outward display of a tourist idyll with interesting shops is pure cover for a rather rough, noisy, traffic-dominated, badly co-ordinated, expensive post-industrial urban-decaying mess; rather, as the Scottish expression goes, ‘a bit fur coat and nae knickers’. 

Premier Inn, Kidderminster

 

Kidderminster - Premier Inn 

Slingfield Mill, Weavers Wharf, Kidderminster DY10 1AA

April 2022

 

Years ago, Kidderminster was a ‘car’ town. Many of the middle-aged residents were long-serving skilled or managerial employees at Longbridge, a town synonymous with strikes, and ‘friday’ cars that didn’t start, had bumpers that fell off or doors that didn’t shut properly. There was a culture, perhaps, that the employees knew best, that they have a job for life making products and providing services to a quality that they deemed to be sufficient. Twenty odd years ago that resulted in Longbridge closing; it's now a huge supermarket.

But attitudes persist, and Kidderminster clearly has a problem. We chose to stay at the PI following our experiences at the other once-decent hotel in town (see my blog entry from February 2022). On our next trip we’ll be staying in Bewdley or Stourport, for we’ve given up on Kidder.

***

Our stay was for two nights, on a mini-tour, after a night’s stop in the PI in Bicester, which is on the outskirts of the town, unlike the Kidderminster one in an old mill in the town centre. The contrast between the two PIs was significant. At Bicester the taxi had been able to drop us off outside the entrance, but there is no drop-off zone at Kidder; also I don’t recall having any concerns over cleanliness of the entrance at Bicester, but at Kidderminster the dingy entrance door, and the surrounding pavement, was splattered with pigeon poo. This sort of thing is surely a sign of an organisation that doesn’t quite understand what customers want, or, indeed, what is hygienic. So much for ‘CleanProtect’.

Reception was up on the 4th floor, of the two lifts one apparently ran at normal speeds but the other took ages. I don’t recall this being the case on previous visits. Check-in was ok, a little confused, although I still haven’t received the email invoice that I was supposed to have been sent. I was, however, not inspired by being told that they were not servicing rooms ‘due to covid’; sorry, but if you work in hospitality, you should expect to encounter members of the public who might have illnesses…. and if you are under 60, and fit, covid poses little risk to you).

Despite there being two of us we were only given one room key - the receptionist clearly not aware of the problems caused if one of a couple goes out to the shops while the other wants to stay in the room, where the lights go out when the key is removed from the holder!

***

Our room was spacious, something I do like about PIs, but it featured the now-standard PI heating/air con and the window didn’t open. (This was probably a good thing in some respects because of the pigeons, but I like fresh air, and PI should deal with their obvious pest problem and clean their windows.) It had been prepared, was reasonably clean, but some details had escaped attention - most notably, the loo cistern refilled at a snail’s pace, meaning it could only be flushed once every half hour. (I did complain about this on the first morning of our stay, and was told it would be fixed ‘if you’re happy for us to enter your room’. I told them I was, but it wasn’t.)

***

The basics of the room were up to the PI standard, but the TV was disappointing - an old, small, screen, fixed high up on a shelf unit and disappointing after the one we’d had in Bicester, for it didn’t get all channels (I couldn't get GBNews). Despite the lack of room servicing, our hospitality tray contained only four milk cartons; a trip up to reception was required to collect more. (Oddly, at reception they had the milk, tea and coffee packed together, so, anyone wanting just more milk took coffees, teas as well…. the objective of only putting out four milks being, presumably, to control costs by restricting the numbers of sachets taken home by guests, I don’t understand why you would give coffees to someone who only wanted more milks….)

The ensuite was clean, but, in addition to the dysfunctional cistern it also featured an incorrectly calibrated shower tap (the thermostat had obviously been changed and not refitted correctly), and, on our final morning, the rollover plug in the washbasin jammed, and we could let water out of it. I have to say that I believe that room servicing standards were inadequate, and some of these points might have been picked up if the room was serviced daily in the traditional fashion. 

***

In the past we have avoided taking breakfast in the PI, choosing Gregg’s or Costa nearby, but this time we did opt for the PI offering. We now regret that and realise why we went elsewhere: the PI staff are clearly not well enough trained to manage the challenges of families around busy buffet serveries. Unlike at Bicester, guests were not required to book a time slot for breakfast.

The first morning - a Sunday - wasn’t too bad, it was quiet. Cereals were rather as at Bicester, mostly dispensed from cylinders, but they did have sealed packs of Weetabix. There was, however, no full fat milk available (which, believe it or not, is more healthy for you than semi-skimmed), and - at 8.20 with breakfast still open for over another hour and a half - the fruit salad was all gone. 

It was at breakfast on the Monday that the inexperience of the team at the Kidder PI really showed itself. For a Sunday night, the hotel was busy - unusually, I thought, because business travellers tend to stay Monday to Thursday nights; moreover, it was busy with families. There were several multigenerational groups, rather as one might expect in a budget hotel on the Costa Blanca, with excited children, disinterested parents, and bemused grandparents. At least one thirty-ish woman was wandering the corridors in her pyjamas at eleven in the morning.

We arrived at breakfast and the restaurant was perhaps half full, with a couple of these family groups sitting at adjacent tables. The staff told us to sit wherever we’d like to. Viv having a few minor disabilities (and wearing a badge to that effect), I didn’t want her sitting too near children, nor too close to a buffet area where hot things might be being dispensed, so we chose a table for two in the middle of a group of four. Within a minute we were surrounded by the family from hell: parents sat at one end, two children between them and us, and on the end table on the other side sat granny and grandad, right next to the tea and coffee machines.

The parents told their children to help themselves, and the children also helped granny and grandad; how nobody was scolded is beyond me. There were signs on and above the coffee machines saying ‘this machine is for grown ups only’ but has no one told PI that young children like to do grown up things, and it should have been obvious to the staff - if there were enough of them (there was only one chap for most of the time, the was busy clearing tables and keeping his head down) that the parents would have been the sort that would have said ‘she’s alright doing that’ even if their daughter happened to be carrying a pot of boiling water. Also, the signs were high up, from the eyes of a ten year old they would have been hidden behind the machines!

I told Viv, loudly and quite deliberately so as to attempt to draw attention to her badge, that I would get her food. The fruit salad was all gone, I managed to find a yoghurt for her and one of the few croissants left.  

For me, I looked for Weetabix; there was none. I wasn’t going to take my chances with the loose cereals, who knows how many hands might have had contact with them. A pain au choc looked tempting: there were two left, until a boy, around ten I think, stuck his hand into the basket and felt both before deciding which he would like. His mother (I assume; at least, she was a lady supervising him) was right beside him at the time, and there were tongs provided, which they went unused.

That little boy might have recently gone to the toilet and not washed his hands, or possibly placed his clean hands on a surface (chair?) where faecal matter had been deposited by someone’s shoes…. an efficient way to spread something like norovirus, perhaps, or salmonella, which can arise in pigeon droppings, I believe. Like Coronavirus, food poisoning can kill the elderly and vulnerable; remember ‘Don’t kill granny’? There were plenty of opportunities to at the Kidderminster PI that morning.

***

For the price, and with all the boasting about ‘CleanProtect’, Premier Inn guests are surely entitled to expect measures to be in place to minimise all hygiene risks, not just covid, in the restaurant as well as in the rooms. Far better measures should surely have been in place in the restaurant that Monday, including perhaps

• A booking system for breakfast, as at Bicester

• An area in the restaurant for families, and one for those who want a quieter time

• A rule in place that all buffet areas - hot and cold - were to be approached by adults only (PI could be liable if a child injured (scalded or burned) themselves, or others, using or accessing the toaster, coffee machine, etc.)

• A staff member supervising the buffet area to ensure that tongs were used and that children did not approach the area

These measures could have been explained to guests when they were welcomed into the restaurant for breakfast. 

As it was, on that day,  for over nine pounds I expected to have a filling, relaxing breakfast. Instead I ate only what I trusted and got out of there quickly: in terms of value it was poor. I wish they hadn’t closed the ‘spoons in Kidder.

***

I won’t stay at the Kidder PI again. Ever.  On leaving I read a sign in the lift asking guests to review the establishment on Tripadvisor; I don’t usually post on TA, for too many of the reviews seem to be done by people with little industry experience, but I have done this time: they got one star. Next time it’ll be Bewdley or Stourport, and the taxi I use to get from there to Kidder won’t have been made at Longbridge.