Chateau de Sainte Colombe Sur Gand

We left without staying, even though we were in a hurry to get to a nearby wedding. We found another place for the same price that was much better, and we had been ready to sleep in our rental car rather than spend the night in that filthy, unsettling "castle." Avoid it. Our booking was for three rooms with private bathrooms, supposedly advertised at €150, but the owner couldn't show us three such rooms. After making us wait nearly 20 minutes, she seemed unaware we were coming and gave us a confusing explanation for why the rooms weren't available. We suspect they may never have existed. Instead, she offered beds in makeshift spaces without lockable doors, and we would have had to share one bathroom with around 9 or 10 other residents. The tour left us extremely uncomfortable. The building was a chaotic jumble of dusty belongings and rubbish. Garbage and assorted items were piled at what looked like the service entrance, and inside were things like ski poles among cardboard boxes, folded tables, and laundry hanging on a clothesline on the first-floor landing. It didn't feel safe or remotely suitable as a hotel or guesthouse, let alone somewhere open to the public. The welcome and service were very poor, and €150 was unacceptable for a place in this condition.

We booked three rooms with private bathrooms for a wedding a few kilometers away, but the bathrooms apparently didn't exist. There was just one bathroom for the whole floor, and the manager offered only one room, suggesting someone in our group sleep in the hallway near the room of "four young men in a rehabilitation program." The building was dusty, dirty, and crammed with the owners' things. Laundry was drying on a clothesline on the upstairs landing. At the entrance, which we had mistaken for a service door, we found a plastic room attached to the "castle" that the woman first presented as our room. We explained we had reserved three. She then led us through the place, which felt like a hovel, while speaking incoherently. We couldn't reach the owner when we arrived. Some young people and their counselor said she was there, though the situation was a bit "special." After waiting 20 minutes, we started banging on the door before a woman appeared. We were worried, disgusted, and scared, so we left. At the wedding, we found out our rooms had also been sold to other guests. They'd been sold three times for the same date, which felt like a complete rip-off. This place should be avoided and shouldn't be open to the public.

The welcome was very poor, the castle was dirty and badly maintained, and the heat was unbearable. We also had to share a bathroom. A terrible stay, I can't recommend it and would avoid it completely. The owner is a bad person, and her partner suffers.

We turned around and left. The place was so filthy and neglected that I doubt we could have stayed there anyway. I've never seen somewhere in such poor condition, and I can't understand how it's open to the public. We had booked three rooms with private bathrooms for a trip with friends. The only bathrooms we could find seemed to be shared by eight to ten people, so the en-suite rooms we'd booked apparently weren't there. The owner's explanation made no sense, and she also suggested we sleep in hallway beds alongside four men we didn't know. Before that, we waited outside for about 20 minutes, after a group of tenants in a reintegration program had gone to look for the owner twice. There was no reception desk. When she finally arrived, she seemed bewildered and was hard to understand. She first showed us an uninsulated lean-to with a plexiglass roof, two bunk beds, a sofa bed, and a double bed, apparently expecting all of us to fit in there. She couldn't show us the three rooms we'd reserved. The "castle" had tarpaulins along its facades, apparently to "hide the squalor," and garbage bags on the lawns and by the entrances. Inside, odd and inappropriate items were piled into every corner, with enough dust to suggest they'd been there for a while. It's unacceptable that a place like this can be booked and opened to the public, including through well-known hotel booking platforms. A 0/5 rating would have fit better.