Travelodge Derby Chaddesden

The one good thing was the location, close to where I needed to be, and the staff were polite. But even at a 2 star hotel, I expect clean sheets. Ours were dirty, and the staff member who came to replace them brought in more dirty ones. It made me wonder whether the bedding gets washed or just returned to the laundry room for reuse. The carpet seemed never to have been cleaned, and the room had a horrible sickly smell that probably came from it.

The location is handy, with decent shops and places to eat on the same street, and the room was okay and clean. But it was hard to get any peace: doors kept slamming, the walls were so thin I could hear someone sneeze in another room, and at 11 pm a child knocked on my door three times. The carpets and walls were heavily marked, there was only one plug socket in the whole room, and shower water ran across the floor and made it slippery.

For one Saturday night, this was excellent value. It's an older, small Travelodge, and the entrance looked more like a door to flats than a hotel, but reception was friendly and check-in was quick. My upstairs room was in a section with just 16 rooms, eight on each side, and I didn't hear noise from inside or outside. There aren't many plugs because the hotel is old, but I could charge my phone and laptop while the TV was on. There's plenty of parking, and the hotel is attached to a Toby Inn pub. A large Asda is nearby, with lots of shops in the other direction. As with Travelodge generally, the room was clean and basic, much like others across the UK.

The staff were good, and so was the hotel, though the place is very dated and could do with a full refurbishment. You get a physical key to enter the rooms, rather than a card like at newer hotels.