The Elvetham Hotel, Fleet, Hampshire

Dates of stay - 26th September 2022 to 28th September 2022

What a fabulous building steeped in history dating back to the days of King Alfred and beyond. The surroundings are imbued with romance. This is where Henry VIII is said to have met and instantly fallen in love with Jane Seymour in the 1500's much to the annoyance of Anne Boleyn. And there is a nearby oak tree that Queen Elizabeth I planted nearly five centuries ago when she stayed at Elvetham. She was feted with great celebrations which I suspect may have been some inspiration for the opening chapter in Virginia Woolf's "Orlando".

I don't like to write negative or unpleasant reviews about venues. That is until I read positive if not glowing reviews on the usual platforms and ask myself "Are they talking about the same place?" I did give The Elvetham Hotel the opportunity to respond to my criticisms by sending them a letter on 4th October, sending them an email on 22nd October asking if they were going to respond to that letter. The response by email was that despite the letter being sent earlier in the month they had only just received it on 22nd October 2022. Yeah right. If this is the case why then do my invoices and statements from the vet hit our letter box the day after they are printed?

I was also told that someone from the management team would be contacting me by phone on 24th October 2022. That phone call did not place as promised or on the following day (25th October) so here goes:

We started to check in at about half past four on 25th September. Having been overwhelmed by the approach to the hotel, the building and the architecture inside the building we rapidly became underwhelmed by the check in process and the system. Yes, the receptionist was welcoming, cheerful and jocular but the jocularity soon ran very thin while we waited for our key. It soon became apparent that either the "system" wasn't working or the receptionist was unable to work the "system". Just be grateful they work in hospitality and not the Trident nuclear capability system. All we wanted was the key to our room. I began to feel like Alan Rickman's character in "Love Actually" when he was trying to discretely buy a piece of jewelry from the character played by Rowan Atkinson. The key could not be released until we had been processed through the "system". After at least fifteen minutes we were then presented with a card payment machine so a tab could be set up and we could pay for our room.

"Just a minute, we have already paid."

"Well there is no record on the system."

Luckily another team member came behind the desk and rescued the situation by working the "system" without us having to pay anything again. We were allocated Room 151 over in the converted stable block approximately 151 yards away.

We listened to the owls hooting around the grounds and had a very restful night's sleep. We awoke to soft sunlight, mists and cattle lowing in the nearby field.

It was soon time to get up on the Tuesday morning to get showered and shaved in time for breakfast and fortified to face the day. The Dutchman Wim Hof believes that cold water therapy helps humans to realise the immense power of their minds. It is not a theory had planned to test until I turned the shower on and waited for the water to start flowing warmly. It never did and in fact got colder. While I waited for the miracle of warm water I heard a few other exclamations from along the corridor of guests who had just stepped into the Arctic water stream before checking if it was warm.

On our way to breakfast we mentioned the problem to the receptionist on duty.

"Oh no, not again...yes we are aware of this and are trying to fix it."

It wasn't the same receptionist as the previous evening as no doubt we would have found ourselves embedded in a "system" waiting to be passed through it like a digital suppository.

We stood in a line up to check in for breakfast. That is a lineup of one gentleman ahead of us and us. The gentleman was checked in and shown to a table by the restaurant manager. He came back to us and told us he had to deal with something else and would be with us in a minute. Five minutes later he returned and showed us to a table. The breakfast room is in the conservatory shown in the header photograph and is beautiful. We were told someone would take our order for tea and coffee. There must have been only six other guests yet there were no staff in attendance. No one came and eventually I had to track someone down just outside the kitchen to ask for coffee.

The cooked components of the breakfast were kept in salvers lined up along a set of tables. They were not anchored properly to the tables so when trying to extract said components they had a habit of slipping away and across the table. The same said components were tepid and that was breakfast.

In the evening neither of us felt like eating in the main building so from our room in the stable block we tried to order room service. Every time we tried to phone the order through the phone got cut off. Just as I was getting ready to walk across to the main building a delightful young lady knocked on our door. She had seen we had been trying to get through to room service and came to take our order. Full marks to her. Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door. Ah ha, our meal has arrived. No, it was someone from reception who came over to see if everything was alright as they had seen us trying phone the main building.

"Oh yes, we have been having problem with the new phone system...it doesn't always work properly...anyway as long as you are alright and your meal is sorted I'll be saying goodnight."

Always the "system".

My evening meal was smoked salmon sandwiches with cream cheese. Oh yes, I do live the high life and yet simultaneously maintain my racing snake figure. What I can never understand with this standard of hotel is why the sandwiches they provide are made with highly processed bread that, brown or white, cloys up in your food traps waiting to be removed during night time flossing.

Take each one of these issues in isolation and one might almost forgive the hotel in the belief that they were what could best be described as "blips". But once one happens and then another a pattern begins to emerge of things not being joined up.

What a pity.

Neither of us are what could be described as "fussy" guests. All we .want when we stay away is a comfortable room, hot water, good service and good food. Surely, that is not too much to ask from any establishment.

In summary, based on our experiences in September 2022 and the fact that the hotel has not responded to my letter by email or phone as they promised we will not be booking to stay here again for quite a while.