This was my second trip to a Q-hotel, having visited one as part of a group last year.
This is a large modern purpose-built hotel resort that focuses on conferencing, its health spa and particularly the 27-hole golf course, set around a couple of artificial lakes. It is set in rolling Northamptonshire countryside, close to the pretty village of Hellidon, south west of Daventry. There are magnificent views (oddly the best are from the car park!).
The health spa also has a bowling alley as well as the swimming pool, gym, jacuzzi and steam room. The conference venue has 24 meeting rooms and the hotel 106 bedrooms, with over 200 car parking spaces, set in tiered car-parks on the contours of the hill above the golf course.
As a hotel, it is very comfortable: the rooms are modern, spacious, with generous en-suites. They are a little formulaic (with the bedroom layout of every other modern hotel) but I found the beds to be very good, and everything was very clean and well stocked (one small oddity - no shoe-shining kit in the room).
The only thing to note though is that the rooms are not air-conditioned, and even in October the room was quite warm and we had to leave the window open all day and night. There was a tower fan in the room - always a warning sign. In hot weather it could be rather uncomfortable.
For what was otherwise a very nice weekend, I had only two gripes. First, they didn't seem to have enough staff, with queues at check-in and check-out. Not bad queues, but with one person on duty on the Sunday morning when I checked out, and half a dozen people in the queue, if any other guest had had a problem, we'd have been waiting. On the evening before they also had to close one of the bars, because they didn't have enough staff for the four different groups attending. But they must surely have had a good idea of how many guests were staying? (And it is not the sort of place you can walk anywhere else.)
The other issue for me was the food: it was all right, but the Q-hotel in Stratford-on-Avon provided our group with excellent buffet food one night and a set meal on the second, and Hellidon was a definite second best in comparison. Maybe it's a staffing issue again?
Aside from that, we had a good time and I think the other groups did too, especially if you are after golf. It's easily accessible from the Midlands - about a 15 minute drive to the A5 and M1, and easy to find.
Tip, if driving from the A361 junction at Charwelton, take the second right-hand turning. The first takes you on a winding and slightly awkward road through Hellidon village: the second takes you straight to the hotel. read more