Sunnymead Guest House

There was no check-in guidance or room information when we arrived. We were told by a staff member, apparently out for a walk, to let ourselves in. The front door stood wide open, and the place felt abandoned, with nobody inside. There wasn’t a reception. One half-shut room was full of scattered belongings, a filthy mess, and what looked like bedding. All the keys were left out where anyone from the street could take one, and we took the only hanging key we could find. In our room, the sheets were dirty, the towels smelled awful, and one had someone else’s hair on it. There was crumpled bedding in the wardrobe, and the drawers held random rubbish, including cleaning gloves and light bulbs. The shower had black mould, and the whole room seemed close to falling apart. Only the main light worked; the bedside lamps and bathroom light were broken. We didn’t want to touch anything. Absolutely horrifying and beyond unacceptable.

I couldn’t sleep with the dog howling in the yard, so after an hour I left and faced a very difficult motorcycle ride across the country in the early hours. This was easily the worst accommodation I’ve had anywhere in the world, and I wish I’d checked the recent Google reviews first, since others were reporting the same problems. There was nobody there to greet me. The owner was apparently at a pub, so I had to go down the road to find someone at a bar who could open up. They’d been left the wrong key, and someone had to climb over the garden wall to let me in. The decor might have seemed fresh before the Iron Curtain fell, but it’s showing its age now. The sheets were rumpled, brown and dirty. You expect to feel like things are crawling on you in a tent, less so in a guest house. I once stayed in a Hong Kong hostel dorm with 30 blokes snoring and farting all night. Even that was better than Sunnymead Guest House.

The location’s good, right by the beach and restaurants, but I’d find somewhere else to stay. The landlord was at a bar when we arrived, and the family room, room 5, was so cramped I could barely get my suitcase through the gap. The bed creaked like something from a haunted house, and there was hardly room to move in the bathroom. My mum cut her elbow on the shower, and the water was either freezing or burning hot. Water from the sink went everywhere. A dog barked all night, and the walls were so thin I could clearly hear people talking in other rooms. There was no room service, the man running the place was always at the bar, and a huge gap under the door let light in. The green fire exit light in the room never switched off.

I got about two hours of sleep and won’t come back. After the noisy, drunk people from the pub finally quieted down, it was 4 a.m. and I was just starting to nod off when people upstairs woke me by talking loudly. Their noise carried through the single-glazed windows for 2-3 hours after the pub at the bottom of the hill let out around 10 to 15 people. We’d booked two double beds, but they definitely weren’t double. The shower was poor, with hardly any water and temperatures flipping between warm and cold. There was no parking, just a one-hour space opposite the hotel.