Travelodge Chippenham

The hotel is perfectly located by the train station, and breakfast is good. It’s better to pay for breakfast one day at a time instead of for the whole stay. If one person sharing a room isn’t staying for the entire booking, you can’t pay for breakfast for just that person for the full stay. The rooms are minimal, and the Wi-Fi is terrible, so don’t bother with it. If you’re travelling from another country, you’re better off spending the money on a higher-level or unlimited eSIM.

We’ve stayed here before and use Travelodge a lot. On this visit, I took off two stars. The service and rooms were okay, but the building looks poorly made for a fairly new hotel, just look at its exterior and the materials used. The bar and restaurant were totally functional, like most Travelodge locations, but had no soul or atmosphere. Our room, 304, needed some minor maintenance. The toilet seat was very loose, the shower soap dispenser was broken, and there were cigarette butts and lots of dirt between the outer and secondary inner windows. Surely the cleaner sees this every day? The location worked well for us near the train station, and there’s good free parking around the back.

There was no electric car charging in the car park, which is unusual these days, and I faced a long check-in queue with only one receptionist. The corridor outside my room was dirty and hadn’t been vacuumed. The room was at 29 degrees when I arrived, the soap dispenser was empty, and there was no secure Wi-Fi, so I couldn’t work in the room. At night, a bright red flashing light on the smoke alarm above the bed and flashing lights on the air conditioning kept me awake most of the night. Noise from the railway opposite carried on through the night as well. Breakfast was another hassle. Nobody was there to seat us, so we served ourselves without realising it wasn’t paid for, then had to pay an extra £10 each. The breakfast was pretty bad: no coffee, watery apple juice, and no orange juice. It was served in a really grim, depressing room. A genuinely rubbish stay.

Free parking and a good location, right next to Aldi, two minutes’ walk from B&M, and five to seven minutes on foot from the station and high street. I stayed at Travelodge for two nights. The rooms were nice and big, and the experience was pleasant. I’ll definitely stay again.