Despite the 18th century building and surrounds, there was little romance to be found at the Gretna Hall Hotel.
For us, it served as a practical way to break up the journey north, and if you need to do just that en route to the highlands then you will find Gretna Hall Hotel within touching distance of the A74M, and it does the basics in a perfunctory manner.
Checking in was smooth and efficient, having already booked online and there was ample on-site parking. Our room seemed a million miles from reception along tartan carpeted corridors.
Said chamber was host to a rather short bed which I had to push forward a little way from the wall to accommodate my long shanks. The room itself somehow felt a bit cramped and I was relieved to be staying there only the one night. Despite the look of being modernised, I think that was as much a gesture as anything else, with a contemporary and rather urban styled headboard leading the way and fixed to the wall so as to form a bizarre and unjustified centrepiece to the room.
The night was humid and the open window allowed the steady stream of traffic on the nearby A74M to gurgle and whoosh across the ripples of my restless sleep.
The shower worked. It was in the bath. It got me clean.
I dried myself. Skipped breakfast and left.
Outside, the 18th century part of the building positively glowed in the Saturday morning sunlight. A postman tumbled past and shadows yawned from the ample branches of trees across the lawn. As we walked to the car, the Old Smithy stood across on the other side of the car park, vying with Gretna Hall for the title of World's Whitest Building.
Are the Borders boring in and of themselves or is it just the sheer hard luck of happening to exist between the Highlands and the Lake District, two of the more astonishing parts of the UK? read more