We stayed at the Ascot House Hotel in mid-February, and it proved a good location from which to…read moreexplore the delights of Harrogate, just under a mile to walk into the periphery of the town centre. Ascot House is an impressive looking hotel, set on a corner plot adjacent to a green area, adorned with early flowering spring bulbs and trees coming into bud because of the mild winter. The car park for the hotel was a little small for the number of rooms it had, but the access road to the side handled the overspill. The car spaces are also a little svelte, something to be aware if your car is on the large side.
Inside the hotel has high ceilings and an impressive air of spaciousness throughout. The staircase to the rooms is punctuated by an impressive stained glass window, that the light streams through in the early morning. Rooms wise, there are lots and it can be a fraction disorientating at first to find you actual room. The room itself was well proportioned, warm and spacious, with a large bathroom, complete with a bath, more unusual these days. A decent sized TV, that kept us entertained with random winter sports, like snowboard half pipe, in the dead time between going out for the day, and eating out in the evening. The mattress was a little soft, but that's a minor quibble.
Breakfast was efficiently run, a good variety of cereals, fruit, juices and a good range of hot food, which always speedily arrived, the scrambled egg and 'Full Yorkshire' being particularly fine. The dining room doubles as a restaurant for residents and non-residents in the evening too.
A few points stopped it getting that all important fifth star, the Hotel was well maintained and was undergoing somewhat of makeover whilst we were there. They had a team decorators painting the foyer while we were there, setting up just after breakfast and still working when we returned mid-afternoon. The decorators were always impeccably polite but clambering over dust sheets and dodging wet paint to enter the hotel, was a novelty initially but became a little bit of a trial.