Lynmouth, Tregonwell Guesthouse

We stopped for lunch here and were amusingly disappointed. It was so bad all we could do was laugh! Welsh rarebit is not cheese microwaved on bread (also microwaved) with a smear of mustard and Worcestershire sauce. Cheap and nasty ingredients to the tune of nearly 15 quid for one 'welsh rarebit', one pasty (also microwaved) and one cheese and ham sandwich' WTF. I can only assume that the owners are mental as they allow such poor food to be attributed to their name. I hope their business fails because of it; but it probably wont!

Advantages:

Location of the Tregonwell Guest House is by the river - splendid. We were a group of 8 walking a section of the SW coastal footpath and this B&B is quite close to it.

Areas for improvement:

Interpersonal skills - we were made to feel as if we were a nuisance and an imposition rather than paying guests. Our welcome was cool and almost hostile.

Quality of food - the breakfast food was mediocre and uninspiring and the packed lunch was poor (value and quality). The sandwiches were made with one slice of white and one of brown bread. When I opened mine (halfway along a 14 mile hike!) I saw the white slice was mouldy so I had to discard the pack. The Kit Kat and cake were OK though. Luckily I had my own cereal bars with me.

Rooms - our room was small and cluttered. The en suite shower room was also tiny and had very thin towels. Two friends did not even have an en suite. The bedding wasn't sufficiently warm and the radiator only came on for a short spell even though it was really cold that night. The owner did not seem to want us to turn on the radiators at all!

Had we not been with a group of friends and therefore able to laugh at the Basil Fawlty-ness of the whole experience we would have felt quite aggrieved. Thank goodness it was only one night's stay. The owner seemed delighted to send us on our way. We were equally delighted to go! In case you are wondering if we are noisy and badly behaved teenagers, the answer is no. We are a group of retired and semi-retired professional people - all well behaved! I must mention that all our other B&Bs that week were great.

Ending on a positive note, the owner did give us a good recommendation for supper - The Rising Sun, by the harbour. We had a lovely meal there - and the staff couldn't have been more welcoming to us!

Very friendly and traditional B & B with extremely comfortable ensuite rooms plus a "jaw-dropping" location by the East Lyn river looking down towards Lynmouth. Clifford & Josie made us feel very welcome and it was a privaledge to stay in the house owned by the Sea Captain Jack Crocombe who lead the famous 1899 "Overland Launch" lifeboat rescue of the Forrest Hall ship. To see inside Jack's home was just an honour indeed!

We stayed at Tregonwell Guesthouse for two nights. Owner was very unkind to us from the beginning (until the very last end, he didn't even bother to say goodbye when we left!). Owner didn't listen to us when we ordered breakfast (and the breakfast was terrible, everything too fat and the toast was sompy & cold).

The rooms were very small and stuffed with useless junk. The shower was almost the same size as your body so you couldn't turn around in it.

And most of all: My partner had used her towel and hung it to dry. When we came back the same towel was folded and it was still wet!!! That says it all. Don't go there!

Lynmouth though is a very nice place! Just book another B&B.

We were greeted by a very rude owner who was very unwelcoming. The whole house smelt of cheap air freshener and was very stuffy. The decoration was quite frankly hideous and depressing. The rooms were dingy and grubby. The breakfast was revolting with anaemic cold toast and a fry up swimming with grease and sausages with what looked like one percent meat content. As there were three of us staying we were in one twin and one single room. We assumed we would sit together for breakfast but were in fact on different tables. When a polite request was made as to whether we could sit together we were almost shouted at and the man exclaimed' 'it is August you know!'..? It was as though we had asked for a private audience with the Pope! The friend who had telephoned the booking said the the owner had debited her card before she had even arrived which I think is not allowed.

I hope people read this and realise this is NOT a place to have any pleasure at all.

We gave our credit card details and were surprised to find that the money had been taken out of our accounts in full months before our stay, not usual practice surely.

The website says that there is 'free car parking and garaging available to allow you to forget the car. When we arrived the owner told us to park on the road which was very narrow, we eventually found a space some way away from the B&B and carried our bags back. There was one garage that I could make out (for use by the owner presumably) so the boast of free car parking is misleading. It was free but it was on a public road. When we booked, a group of 3 friends the owner said we could have 2 separate rooms with an adjoining bathroom. The bathroom was down two flights of stairs from our room. Again misleading. However we did have a nice weekend despite staying at Tregonwell

My husband and I stayed for two nights, to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, an infrequent holiday without the kids.

We are both professional people, bored with impersonal hotels, who wanted to experience the warmth of staying in a small guest house. We paid extra for a superior room and were surprised, on entering our room, to find it actually was the room we'd booked, the Captain's Room, we'd expected something more themed and couldn't see what we'd paid the extra money for!

We also think the tariff is over generous for the accommodation provided.

We can't relate anything specifically, except see orange juice below, that the owner did, or said, to make us feel unwelcome but we didn't feel welcomed!

Breakfast was OK but poor value for the £70 we, as a couple, had paid. The owner did provide my husband with a second (small) glass of orange juice when asked but he made it quite clear with his body language that he was miffed at being asked. We had no orange juice on our first morning! Why not just leave the orange juice on the communal table for guests to help themselves?

We saw evidence that these proprietors work very hard during the summer months but there is a maddening lack of personal skills that, if addressed, would make Tregonwell a desirable place that everybody would recommend and return to, securing improved business for the owners during both the summer and the long winter months.

Some of this improved business would then provide the necessary funds to update the rooms that require it.

Happy guests return!

I stayed one night in this place with a group of walkers - and never again. We all had to stand outside in the pouring rain and take our boots off - nowhere to put them all - before we were allowed in; single occupancy of a double room cost 55 GBP and wasn't even ensuite; a lady who asked for croissants for breakfast was told there weren't any, so got no breakfast; a charge of 64 GBP was made for transferring our luggage to the next hotel (average for this was 25 GBP); packed lunch (5 GBP) consisted of 2 rounds of bread a banana and the cheapest cola available in the local supermarket... the list goes on and on. A total and unmitigated awful place. Avoid it at all costs.

I wouldn't recommend this guesthouse to anyone, and wouldn't go back here myself.

This property is in a lovely location and could be a wonderful place to stay if things were brought up to scratch. At the moment the tariff is far too high for the level of accommodation, which is way below standard. The room we had was classed as superior but was far from that. The bedding was not co-ordinated to the decor, which was poor. The wardrobe was very old and too narrow to hang clothes. There was also a door behind it, which presumably led into the next room and we could hear the conversations of the people in there, so we were having to speak very quietly so they couldn't hear us.

The sink was in the bedroom on a very rough wooden frame and an old cotton curtain underneath to hide the pipes etc., although this was a good place to hide our empty bags. As for the shower room it was the worst I've ever seen. It looked like a do it yourself job that went wrong about ten or more years ago and was never finished. The walls were cracked and dirty, the paintwork peeling. Black bits were falling into the shower tray, which had to be washed out before use each time. Apart from the mould, there were also slugs crawling up the walls, OK they were only baby ones. Anyway we had a great holiday at the Lynmouth Tregonwell Guesthouse.