Shap Wells Hotel

Shap Wells Hotel seems to be in a 70's timewarp, catering mainly for elderly people's coach parties on the way up the M6 and not making any obvious effort to update facililties. Paying 75 pounds B&B seemed a bit steep for a rather poor bed with oldish bed linnen (blanket and sheets) and a tiny, dated bathroom with not enough headroom above bath to turn round in shower. Plumbing gurgled a bit too! Cooked buffet breakfast was good though and staff were welcoming. Shap Wells is really in the wilds - plenty of sheep, but that's about it. Certainly not up to other parts of the Lake District in terms of views!

Very rude on our arrival, reception claimed that I had made no booking, and I had to show them the laterooms printed confirmation which caused them to raise their eyebrows. They then claimed never to have seen it as they "usually get a confirmation fax", and then miraculously found it in their email at which point they commented that i had booked late at night almost using it as a suggestion that it was my fault they didnt see it!! Not courteous at all.
Since they didnt have our booking they gave us a pokey disabled room with no apologies. We booked a meal in the restaurant and ate from the fixed price menu which was like school dinners. Not a good experience. Shame as the hotel itself is in a beautiful setting, but the customer service skills were non-existent.

Window covered in cobwebs containing dry, dead, flies. Hose in shower between control and shower head looked black but was in fact chrome colour but covered in black mould. The room also smelled very unpleasant. Breakfast on Saturday took 45 minutes to arrive at the table, by which time the coffee and toast were cold (the coffee and toast had to wait as no side plate nor teaspoon were available). Also no heating in bedroom (although I did overhear one of the senior hotel staff discussing with another resident that he had been instructed to make fuel efficiency savings due to spiraling energy costs). All of this might sound petty, but over the past 6 weeks we have stayed in several hotels in England, Italy, Romania and Spain, and by some distance this was the poorest, particularly in terms of cleanliness and service. This was also the most expensive.

The food was good. The only negative point was that the other guests seemed to be very old, got up in the middle of the night, chatted and put on the TV very loudly. I would suggest that there be a separate area for young people or families.

I really like this hotel. Admittedly you never quite know what you're going to get but it varies from good to excellent - never bad and is much better than the typical bland chain hotels. This has got character and history - okay, sometimes you may have a fair wait for your food but other times it's very quick; sometimes there's a coach party in which makes it quite busy, other times you feel like you're the only people there - if you're laid back and don't get stressed over minutiae I would thoroughly recommend this hotel - one of my favourites! If you do stay, make sure you go up to the red squirrel feeding area after breakfast - never seen so many red squirrels so close!