Four UK Hotels -- Rooms and Bathrooms

A first-hand report on four three-star hotels in three places: Windermere, Carlisle and Edinburgh

We are near the end of a wonderful but dismayingly expensive trip to northern England and Edinburgh, Scotland. We tried to be thrifty, using trains, staying in three-star hotels, going for long walks, rationing our museum admissions and not going overboard for dinners. But with £1 = $1.90, everything is expensive. I think even backpackers' budgets must be strained.

We knew we wanted to spend a few days in the Lake District, but beyond that, we traveled free-form, going where the weather promised to be non-rainy. After the Lake District, when we were deciding whether to go north (English border towns, Scotland), we went north, and when we were deciding between Glasgow (west) and Edinburgh (east), we went east. We lucked out and experienced little rain, despite dreary Britain-wide forecasts, but traveling without much of a plan does carry its financial costs.

Just as a frame of reference for the modest hotel report that follows, five-star hotels are luxurious by international standards, and four-star properties are luxurious by most people's standards. Three-star hotels should be beyond basic and more than merely comfortable.

All our rooms have private bathrooms (called "en suite"). In all four hotels we stayed at, the plumbing was downright bizarre. Sometimes the hot water is on the right, cold on the left -- and sometimes vice versa. In virtually every hotel bathroom, it takes a turn or two of the handles or knobs for any water to come out of the faucet, Speaking of faucet, every sink has one hot and one cold. The British plumbing industry seemingly hasn't figured out that mixing hot and cold in the tap is a good idea so that people can adjust the water temperature on a cold to hot continuum.

Whether firm or semi-firm, every pillow on every bad was flat. Not lumpy, but flat. Some people ike 'em flat; some like 'em fluffy. Flat-pillow fans will be happy in Britain. Bed linens were generally smooth and seem to have a fairly high thread count. Hot-water heat prevailed, with individually adjustable radiators in all rooms we stayed in.

All properties included breakfast, and both English breakfasts and Scottish breakfasts, which are virtually interchangeable, can fuel a tourist well into the day. The whole cooked-to-order meal consists of eggs, bacon (like our Canadian bacon or grilled ham) and sausages, perhaps grilled tomatoes and mushrooms and toast, toast, toast. In addition to (or instead of) these hot breakfasts, every place offered fruit juice, two or three self-serve cereals with milk, sometimes yogurt and usually some kind of cooked, canned or sugared fruit.

Every room had a small television -- often with very few channels but always with good color and crisp picture. Every room comes with a very efficient electric pot for heating water coffee and tea, generally with small cellophane packets of cookies.

Generalities aside, here are some specifics about breakasts, details about our rooms and bathrooms, how much they cost and how we found the four places where we stayed:

The Famous Wild Boar Hotel, Windermere

Rambling country inn full of warmth and charm. Located on more than 70 acres with private walking paths, skeet shooting, pond and other amenities. Access to spa and pool at Low Wood, a sister property, several miles away. Acclaimed on-site restaurant and bar. Not convenient without a car. Several miles from Windermere and Bowness (£10+ and £6+ each respectively by taxi). The bus only runs past the inn two days a week -- at least at this time of year.

Breakfast: Real breakfast menu with good choice of hot items, plus cold buffet with self-serve juices, cereals, stewed fruits, cheese, pastries, sliced meat. Good selection of hot breakfasts, including English breakfast and other dishes. Toast. Coffee ( including espresso drinks) and tea.

Bedroom: Room 24 is a very small room dominated by a very large bed. Pretty garden view.

Bathroom: Long, skinny and windowless with a fan that made a terrible racket. Open the door, and there's the toilet, next to which is the only shelf in the room (that's where the liquid soap, bath gel and shampoo dispensers are inconveniently placed). Separate soaking tub and shower. When water is let out of the tub, however, it bubbles up through the shower drain. It could be worse. The hotel makes commendable efforts to be green and save water -- but requiring three or four flushes to get paper down is going too far. We used a toilet across the hall for anything more than paper. It didn't have such a restricted flush.

Booked through: Visit Cumbria.

Cost: Starting May 1 and running through the summer, rates for a "house room," which is what I think ours was, starts at £34 nightly per person. If ours was a "classic room," the per person nightly rate will soon start at £39. For anyone not on a B&B plan or not a hotel guest, breakfast is £10.75 additional per person.

Contact: Crook, near Windermere, Cumbria LA23 3NF; 08458 509 508 (reservations within the UK) or +44 (0) 1524 844822 (outside the UK).

Lakes Court Hotel, Carlisle

Great location in the center of town, right next to the railroad station. Gracious public spaces. Very expensive (30 minutes, £3) WiFi in lobby and bar only. Also, restaurant in hotel.

Breakfast: Crisply set tables. Self-serve juice, cereal, stewed fruit, packaged pastry. English breakfast. Toast. Coffee and tea.

Bedroom: Room 119 sized like a regular US motel room, but with long vestibule. Simply furnished. Front of hotel, so noisy on Saturday night when all of young Carlisle is out, about and loud. Promotional literature proclaims "romantic" hotel; our room not one of them.

Bathroom: Functional, but bizarre retrofit. Walk into the bathroom at bedroom floor level and step up onto a platform (about 12 inches high) to tub, sink and toilet. Potential booby trap that in the US would be lawsuit waiting to happen.

Booked through: Walked in.

Cost: Sign outside said "Rooms from £90." I asked while my husband waited with the bags and was told we could have a double for £70. We took it.

Contact: Court Square, Carlisle, Cumbria CA1 1QY; +44 (0) 1228 531951.

County Hotel, Carlisle

Old center-city hotel. Great location. Creaky, quirky and kind of shabby, but picturesque.

Breakfast: Self-serve juices, cereals, yogurt, stewed fruit. English breakfast. Coffee and tea.

Bedroom: Smile-enducing Room 112. Enormous and yet sparsely furnished in sort of a bordello style -- red velvet and all. Floors creak. Small distant TV and small refrigerator.

Bathroom: Booby prize. Inside bath room with neither window nor vent fan. Stale swampy-smelling air. Brackets for shelf over sink, but no shelf. Pretentious but ill-fitting mahagony panel fronting tub. Possibly the worst caulking job I have ever seen with thick, wavy line of bright white caulk between tub and dark red tiles. Do they allow kindergartners to caulk tubs in Britain?

Booked through: Walked in.

Cost: Double room, £50.

Contact: 9 Botchergate, Carlisle, CA1 1QP; +44 (0) 1228 531316.

Sonas Guest House, Edinburgh

Charming, whistle-clean B&B on a quiet south-side street, just a few doors from an arterial well served by many buses, including routes directly from the old city and the railroad station. Free WiFi.

Breakfast: Serve-yourself juices, cereals and (hooray!) fresh bananas and apples. White and brown toast. Selection of several hot breakfasts, including Scottish breakfast. Coffee and tea. Fresh flowers on the breakfast table.

Bedroom: Room 4 is lovely, bandbox near but very tiny (about 8x10), plus a small vestibule and a bathroom that is just about 5 feet square.

Bathroom: Tub/shower combination. Nicely tiled. Clean and modern. No window. Good, clearing tilting mirror that accommodates all heights. Vent fan a tad noisy.

Booked through: VisitScotland's Edinburgh tourist information office on Princes Street, above the railroad station.

Cost: "Special rate" of £27 nightly per person in a double. Booking agent said it's normall about £35. Booking fee of £4, but most convenient for afternoon arrival in a large city, where the only hotels near the railroad station are luxury leaders, way beyond our budget.

Contact: 3 East Mayfield, Edinburgh EH9 1SD; +44 (0) 131 667 2781.

Summary

Best Room: Sonas.
Smallest room: Sonas.
Biggest Room: County Hotel.
Best Ambiance: Famous Wild Boar.
Most Convenient: Lakes Court and County Hotels, both in the center of Carlisle, steps from the railroad station.
Least Convenient: Famous Wild Boar -- unless you have a car.

Conclusion

Three-star lodgings bring cost of a trip from the stratospheric to the affordable (with prices, if not plumbing, comparable to a high-end motor inn or even a good hotel booked via priceline.com or other discounter in the US).

Exploring Hadrian's Wall

Note: Because this is a walking as well as a travel topic, I have posted this same item on my Nordic Walking blog.

English prehistory is daunting. After all, it goes back to Neolithic times (from around 4,000 B.C.), Celts (800 B.C.), Romans (around 53 B.C. to 313 A.D.). Teutonic Anglo-Saxons (roughly 5th century to 7th century, by which time they had evolved into Englishmen), Vikings (beginning in 865 A.D.), Norman (beginning in 1066) and on through the reigning families: Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Commonwealth & Protectorate, Restoration, Hanover, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Windsor – and in the north, the Scots. Of the cathedrals, castles and other landmarks from each era, from the Neolithic stone circles (think Stonehenge) to the Millennium Wheel (erected along the Thames for the Bicentennial), the one that most captivates walkers is Hadrian’s Wall.

The wall, begun in 122 A.D. under the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, was built to secure the northernmost reaches of the empire from the Scots. It runs 73 east-west miles parallel to the A69 highway between Carlisle and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Much of the wall was dismantled, the stones used by later peoples for other building purposes, but some remains – in various states of decay or restoration. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with public footpaths following much of it, including sections atop the wall itself in several places.

From the center of Carlisle, a border town (a small city, really) in northwestern England, we boarded the bus cleverly number AD122 (see above), also called the Hadrian’s Wall Country Bus that makes several multi-stop runs a day between Carlisle and Hexham plus a couple all the way to Newcastle. The Carlisle-Hexham route, in its entirety, takes more than two hours. You can pay per segment, or buy a £7.50 Day Rover ticket that permits travelers to get on and off at will. The first bus leaves Carlisle at 7:35 a.m. and the last returns 8:01 p.m., which leaves plenty of time for sightseeing and walking. A volunteer interpreter rides a couple of the morning buses to tell Hadrian’s story and point out later historic sites in villages en route.

The bus route passes through countryside that is so improbably green and pastoral that it takes imagination to envision it tromped by legionnaires and Scottish insurgents, sometimes running red with combatants’ blood. Stops are at historic sites (including five Roman ones) and in villages with such archetypically England names as Crosby, Brampton, Birdoswald, Gilsland and Haltwhistle.

The last is especially noteworthy for walkers, because the village is in the throes of the 11th annual Haltwhistle Walking Festival. The 2008 festival began on Saturday, April 26 and lasts through Monday, May 5. It includes nearly 20 guided walks of various lengths (1 ½ to 13 miles, including an assisted one of wheelchair users) and various interests (Hadrian’s Wall, woodland bird walk, renewable energy/energy independence and more). Costs range from £3 to £7.

For independent walkers, the two recommended stretches for walking Hadrian’s Wall are from Birdoswald to Gilsland and from Housesteads Roman Fort to Once Brewed, where the National Park headquarters and a large walker/biker-friendly hostel are located.

We encountered legions of other walkers – with one pole, two or none. These included a group on the Haltwhistle Walking Festival “Behind Hadrian’s Wall in Springtime” itinerary, numerous walkers on a British Heart Association fundraiser and so enormous a group of French students that it seemed like another Norman invasion.

The path itself has lots of steep ups and steep downs where it is close to the wall, but there are often milder options in the in the flatter valleys below. Surfaces include erosion-controlling, user-friendly stepping-stones on some of the longer steep sections, gravel, mud and grass. At one point, we followed a sign marked “Old Roman Road” rather than the main footpath and ended up walking through a cow pasture – complete with disinterested cows.

Interestingly to us, in dry Colorado, land administrators urge hikers to walk single file on narrow trails to avoid widening them. Here where it rains a lot, where there are no marked paths, walkers are asked not to walk single file, because regrowth is easier when there has not been much traffic.

One thing we did find is that the distances on told by the guide and even on the map seem to be crow-flight measures, not taking into account the turns in the route or the extra distance added by the ascents and descents. The Housesteads-Once Brewed is always given as 2½ miles. Both of our pedometers and, more significantly, the GPS calculated it to about 4 miles. Mathematical issues notwithstanding, the day was gray, cool and threatened rain that never came. It was a magical route into history almost two millennia ago.

Another option in this region are the Northern Railroad’s guided walks through the Dales and the Eden Valley several times a month from directly from railroad stations on the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle line.

English Intermodality

Seamless rail and bus transportation makes UK travel a breeze

Last October, I rented a car when visiting Sussex. Ad I blogged then, I hated almost every moment of driving on the “wrong” side of the road, shifting with the “wrong” hand and attempting to be both navigator and driver. And filling up the tank, even of a small, economical car, was painful. My husband and I took advantage of United’s introductory Denver-London fare to come to the UK. We are current in the Lake District in Cumbria (northwestern England), and we decided to rely on public transportation. We traveled from there to here with a seamless chain of intermodel transportation (plane, train, bus, trains and then a taxi). This is how we got here:

1) Boulder to Denver International Airport by car.
2) DIA to London’s Heathrow Airport via United (nonstop). This flight operates on a wonderful schedule, departing from Denver at 8:30 p.m. and arriving the next day at 1:00 p.m. +/-, the variable being how many times the plane is ordered to circle Heathrow (we went around the air loop twice). In any case, early afternoon is a good time to arrive at LHR’s Terminal 3, because few international flights get in then, meaning there are no lines.
3) Heathrow to Paddington Station by Paddington Express train.
4) Paddington Station to Euston Station via #205 bus. The bus stop is a couple of minutes’ walk from Paddington at one end and directly in front of Euston on the other. The fare is £2.
5) Euston Station to Lancaster by on the West Coast line, operated Virgin Trains, a sister company to Virgin Airlines. Our first-class BritRail passes (good four days out of 60) are good on this train service -- and it is the only splurge we are planning for this trip. Complimentary coffee and tea are served (there I am, at right, bleary-eyed but happy with a comfortable seat and a cuppa). Food is available. And passengers are offered a free newspaper.
6) Lancaster to Windermere in the Lake District via Transpennine Express. We had 40 minutes between trains, so my husband stayed with our luggage and I took a quick walk around Lancaster Castle and the priory next door. They were just a few minutes from the Lancaster railroad station.
7) Windermere rail station to our hotel via taxi.

I can’t compliment the train service enough. Not only are the trains punctual but they are clean, the staff is accommodating and the cars well designed. The train even has lavatories spacious enough to accommodate wheelchair users and operated by push button. One button opens the door; two others close and then lock it. The flushing mechanism works, and the sink is equipped with automatic water tap, soap dispenser and hand dryer. How I wish Amtrak could be turned over to Sir Richard Branson or his American counterpart.

TSA Changes Shoe Rules

No, the Transportation Security Agency has not decided that walking through airport metal detectors while wearing shoes does not constitute a security threat. The agency has just tweaked the procedure again -- at Denver International Airport, anway. When I last flew out of here on April 3, passengers had to remove their shoes (of course) and place them in a plastic bin (presumably the one with the paper liner showing a pair of shoes). Today, passengers were instructed to put the shoes directly on the conveyor rather than in bins. This would have been against the rules just a few weeks ago -- maybe even yesterday. The reason, according to the TSAer, is "sanitation. People put food in the bins."

Overpackaged Travel Accessory -- on Earth Day

Bad enough to be in the air, leaving a carbon control, but extra waste galls

We're leaving soon for England and Scotland, feeling a twinge of guilt for flying and probably a pinch in the purse because of the dollar-to-pound exchange rate. To make the long Denver-London nonstop a tad more bearable, I just got new Sony MDR-NC40 noise-cancelling headphones that plug into a plane's sound system.

I can't swim or row to England, but because it's Earth Day, I'm particularly aware of the un-green packaging for these lightweight, made-in-China headphones. The cardboard box encasing the product and its protective plastic cocoon is about 10 by 6 1/2 by 4 inches. The black background means that in many places, the box cannot be recycled, and it appears not to have been made from recycled material either.

Inside, the headphones are encased in a plastic clamshell box secured with with one transparent plastic tape, with another compartmented plastic tray inside. Four strips of adhesive foam are on these plastic parts. I do not see a recycling code on anything. The bilingual instructions were printed and warranty -- seemingly not on recycled paper -- in Malaysia. I realize that an electronic gadget needs to be protected.

It might seem hypocritical or hair-splitting, given that they are designed for use on airplanes, but I do wish that my new headphones had left a smaller carbon footprint. Now, I'm going to have to toss all that packing material that could have been made from recycled materials and itself be recyclable.

Epic Ski Season Drawing to a Close

Saturday at Breckenridge was most likely my last day for 2007-08

I have a love/hate relationship with spring. The gardener and the gas bill payer in me love warm weather, sunshine and the end of the home heating season. I rejoice at the first crocuses, hyacinths, daffodils and tulips, but I'm never sorry when they are snowed upon. These early-season blossoms can take it. The skier and snowshoer rues the end of winter. Especially this winter, with great snow during much of the season across the North American and European snowbelt, the skiing and snowshoeing were great.

It rained in Boulder on Wednesday evening, April 16, but the high country experienced another wintry surge. Overnight, Breckenridge was blanketed with up to 10 inches of new snow. Powder in mid-April. Sweet! I met my son there a couple of days later. The powder, of course, was no more, but we enjoyed a great season-ender, skiing laps on the Mercury SuperChair that had to lines any time during the day. We started skiing with great spring conditions -- firm base with a surface was corning up in the course of the day. By mid-afternoon, the hot sun softened the snow still more, and it was time to hang 'em up for the season.

Sunday was Breckenridge's last day. In Colorado, the season has not quite ended at Loveland (May 4), Echo Mountain (May 4), Arapahoe Basin (June 8) and Silverton Mountain (April 27) that will run their lifts every day for a while, with Aspen Highlands and Wolf Creek operating for another weekend. Snowbasin, UT, is open until April 27 and Snowbird until May 26, with Friday, Saturday and Sunday operations only after May 1. In Oregon, Timberline on Mt. Hood is just cranking for its summer peak. Mammoth, CA, has a few weeks to go with skiing through May or beyond. Alpental, WA, at the Summit at Snowqualmie is operating weekends though May 5, ending with a Cinco de Mayo party on Monday the 5th.

Virtually every ski area that operates well into spring offers deals: buy next year's season pass and start using it at the end of this season, show a season pass from another mountain and ski free or at a discount, bargain daily lift tickets, even better deals on lift/lodging packages. Even as this season has ended for me, and I've done major spring yard cleanup, I'm already looking forward to 2008-09.

Move to Rename Eagle Country Airport

Possible rebranding of Colorado's third busiest airport (number two in winter)

Vail Resorts, Inc., whose marquee holdings are the Vail and Beaver Creek ski resorts, has cleverly been marketing Eagle County Airport as Vail-Eagle Country Airport. Now, according to a report in coloradoconfidential.com, they want to make the marketing name the airport's real name. Vail's new ad agency, Genesis, is cooking up a scheme to rename the airport officially to tie it more closely to the resort brand. The misplaced MadAve minds at Denver's ad agency first came up with Colorado International Airport, and when that was which mercifully shot down, suggested Vail National or even Vail International.

The airport, which can handle aircraft as large as 757s in what the Colorado Confidential website calls "all kinds of weather," is operated by Eagle County. It has become the state's second busiest in winter after Denver International and third-busiest year-round after DIA and Colorado Springs. In addition to some 250,000 commercial passengers annually, it sees "a robust private aviation business." Much of that traffic is to and from Vail and Beaver Creek and ancillary resort developments that cater also to golfers and vacation-home owners, but it is also the airport of choice for many people heading to Aspen, the booming Roaring Fork Valley, Glenwood Springs and to communities beyond. It is located just south of Interstate 70 between Eagle and Gypsum.

I wouldn't be taking bets against the name change, because Vail Resorts, really the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, has publicly stated that it hopes rebranding (I mean the name change) is approved soon so that it can be marketed for next winter. Also, The county is clearly proud of the airport's gateway status to the mountains. The country website introduces it as, "Just minutes from Vail and the best skiing in North America, Eagle County Airport (EGE) gets you directly to the heart of the Colorado Rockies, year round. Trade the long drives, snowy passes and airport delays, for friendly, world class service and ASAP access to your favorite outdoor activities."

While Vail Resorts is promoting an official airport name that shares its brand, you can bet that the Aspen Skiing Company would be less thrilled. Aspen's own airport, formerly called Sardy Field, is now Aspen/Pitkin County Airport (ASE), mirroring the current marketing moniker for Vail/Eagle County Airport (EGE). ASE has the benefit of being right outside of town but the drawback of being more weather-vulnerable than EGE, which is 35 miles from Vail and 25 from Avon/Beaver Creek.

Then again, I wouldn't bet on it either, even though many Eagle County officials and residents who are not tied to the resort company are not in favor of having another aspect of their identity lost. County commissioners, who have to vote on it, are aware of sentimental attachment to the old name and sometimes dig their heels in when confronted by pressure from the ski company. "There's also an emotional attachment, and it's really important to a lot of people because they fear the loss of identity of Eagle and Gypsum," county Peter Runyon was quoted as saying. "It's just as legitimate to market and give some brand-name identity to Eagle as it is to Vail. If I felt there was a compelling and overwhelming reason [to change the name], if skier numbers were down and the county was having other problems, I might look at this differently, but we have an incredibly robust tourism economy."

Stay tuned.