Review of Shap Wells hotel, Penrith
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Good - £45 a night for a twin room with breakfast on the Great Getaways rate, which could be canceled without penalty up to 48 hours before arrival, peaceful rural location.
Bad - long queues at breakfast buffet, no sound insulation between rooms. Rural location means you’re dependent on car to get there and if you want a selection of restaurants or pubs.
Rating - 6 out of 10 (at £45 a night)
We stayed for 3 nights in February 2008 at the Shap Wells hotel, which lies around 20 miles south of Penrith. I’d assumed the hotel was in Shap. so had to call into another hotel to ask for directions after we’d driven through Shap with now sight of the hotel. It’s down a single track road a couple of miles south of Shap. It’s a grand old buidling in a quiet, rural location, next to a stream.
There were no spaces in the car park when we arrived and my husband had to move a glass recycling bin so we could squeeze into a space. The receptionist on duty was not very friendly or warn just efficient. Our room was adequate. fairly compact with a small window overlooking the inner courtyard. The bathroom sink had a large crack and there were some cracks in the side of the wardrobe door. We could hear quite a lot of noise from the corridor and nearby rooms.
Breakfast on Saturday morning was an ordeal as there was a 15 minute queue at the cooked breakfast counter. The queue snaked around our table and it wasn’t very relaxing having all these people standing next to your table. There were several large unused tables left all along the window from a function the previous evening which meant that you couldn’t enjoy the lovely view out to the stream.
I asked to speak to the manager to voice my displeasure and while he listened politely he more or less said it was inevitable that there would be a queue for breakfast at a large hotel and there had been no time to remove the large function tables before breakfast. I did try to explain to him that I was trying to be constructive in order to improve the guest experience in ways that don’t necessarily involve spending more money, just more consideration of the guest. The view from the restaurant is one of the best features of the hotel and it’s a waste not to let guests enjoy this because you can’t be bothered to move some tables. When I told the manager this, his reply was “everyone would want to sit by the window”. Well at least some guests would have their wish fulfilled if the function tables had been removed.
Overall at £45 a night the Shap Wells was OK but if I’d paid much more for a rather basic room and poor breakfast service I’d had been pretty hacked off.
