What a fantastic place to stay! I went to this fantastic hotel for a work trip. I was totally…read moremesmerized to stay in a really old British 'castle like' place. Shortly after I arrived, my coworker told me that the place used to be a mental institution/hospital. I'm not sure how you'd react to that, but I kind of loved it and spent my free working minutes on the web, trying to learn about potentially haunted rooms and ghosts of ol' crazy people. Unfortunately, no paranormal activities at this facility. So instead, I spent my evening in the gym facility, took a spin course, and sweat my butt off. The next day I tried the swimming pool and sauna as well. I was also really pleasantly surprised that the locker rooms were equipped with fantastic hair dryers ... AND ... GHD hair straighteners. Those babies cost a couple hundred euros a piece! The lunch menu on the first day included meat and chilli beans, as well as salmon.. and then of course, some salad and lots of desert. I tried the salmon with chili beans and overdosed on proteins. So so so good. The salmon was really fresh. I ended up ordering salmon for dinner as well. The quality of the food there was really fantastic. So the reason I am giving it 4 stars, instead of 5 is because it was just cold and chilly in there. The front door was kept frequently open and I think the windows aren't properly isolated, so when the temperature drops outside, you feel it right away inside. Other than that - definitely recommended. About 35 minutes from the Manchester Airpoint (36 Pound trip by cab). Give it a try!

Stayed her recently for a one day training conference with work…read more Top tip. It's only 30 mins drive from Manchester airport but ring the hotel direct and they will give you the number for a local hackney firm they use. £40 vrs £70. More beer money for me! P.S. Hackney firm are excellent and picked us up in a brand new Toyota Avensis estate. I digress. Arrived at the hotel which is situated on its own 20 acres grounds and it is a Grade II listed building. Very nice setting. It was a Monday afternoon and the reception staff were all older ladies. Unusual but you knew they knew their stuff. Being Irish we asked when did the bar close? (We have been stung before with venues like this and the bar closing early) and to our great surprise she tells us and I quote "The bar closes when you stop drinking". Hallelujah, did she realise the trouble that was going to be in store.... Now now, we did behave ourselves I promise. P.S. This used to be a mental asylum you know! Decor very tasteful and well appointed. A small bit of a labyrinth but you get to were you are going to in nice surroundings. Room has all the 4 star mod cons, room key is a funny plastic card with holes in that you leave in the lock to open. Requested an Iron and board and had them within 5 mins. Bar nice and spacious. Best thing ever was the free american pool table but had UK sized balls, better than that was the garden sized connect 4 set!! Hours of fun for all the guys at the conference. We had teams from the UK, Ireland and Holland. A great night. Bar food really nice and prices not bad either. I'd recommend the burger with bacon and cheese served with great fries and coleslaw all on a wooden chopping board (they must have broken all the plates, ha ha ). Bar staff during the next day were hard to find and slow but that's because I'm used to Irish bar/pubs speeds. If your slow in Ireland you go out of business fast! Great conference facilities and little touches like bowls of sweets (Drumsticks, Fruit Salad and Love Hearts) during the intervals make all the difference. Breakfast & Lunch in the main restaurant was really good with a large choice. All buffet style but it just meant you got more of what you liked. Nice touch is the area between the bar and main restaurant with a free coffee/tea station and bowls of more sweets, apples, bags of crisps etc. These guys know how to look after a business conference. Will be pushing for more training and conferences here.

Very good venue for Craft Fairs and Antiques Fairs that are helf here on a fairly regular basis…read more Has gardens to walk in and a bar too. This place used to host top bands and I once saw Pink Floyd here!

The Revolution express wagon has finally made its mark on Macclesfield. Occupying the site of what…read morewas once the most popular haunt of twenty-somethings, this new bar is a step up in the right direction. The standard business model has been brought to this small town, and on offer are the usual cocktail menu's for which the brand is famous for. Nothing special above anywhere else, but for Macclesfield you might find yourself coming here quite regularly. It is something different, something fresh.

To me a rather sad and empty place except at the weekends when its claustrophobic ally overcrowded…read more Reasonable standard food. Good 2for1 cocktail nights if you can keep up with when. Fairly indifferent cold staff. Not as upmarket as it would like to think. Annoyingly full of screaming 15 year old girls at 'events' such as Halloween, at which for example no efforts to decorate. Good for shot trays and convenient late night tasty Chilli Jacks over road. Extremely suspicious of everyone in general. Can be quite an aggressive pub-like atmosphere rather than a calming laid-back bar. A lot of tension in the atmosphere. Probably good to pull in if you're looking for fancy-free, no strings or a one-off. Cocktails below average but fairly quick, if unfriendly, service.

This is the only room I've encountered in the UK with AC. I am so weirded out by that, but yeah, I…read moreknow, we're spoiled in the US because AC is so common. Got a room on the first floor, which is not the ground floor, and again. WAHT?? Anyway, different but do-able. Watched a bag of laundry stay outside the same room for the time we were there, from arrival to the time we left, that bag didn't move. The bathroom was quite interesting. You either had a door that closed over the commode or one that closed off the whole of the bathroom, it made for an interesting door. and the shower had the showerhead not off to the far wall, but to the back wall of the shower, meaning the floor would get wet no matter how you opened the shower door. The corners around the toilet are dirty nasty. Window opened just a little, and the bed was acceptable. the fold out bed was like the kind I've seen on cruises. The room was small but totally functional. In the morning, there was a full english buffet breakfast available, but sadly none of the Cinnamon Rolls they're famous for in America.

Decent size room with a cosy double bed, TV, kettle in the room but no fridge or in room safe…read more The rooms are clean and looked as if they have been recently modernised. Poor shaving light in the bathroom, although the bathroom was spotlessly clean. The room is a little short on power points for gadget hungry power travelers although I believe the hotel is addressing this. Good free breakfast included in the price of your room, cereals, croissant, toast sausages etc Excellent welcome and front desk service from Becci & Jessica The hotel is a 1 minute walk from Stoke's Britannia football stadium.

Rodney Densem Wines Annual Client Tasting at Crewe Hall is probably the largest event of its kind…read morein the region. Over 500 guests can enjoy the annual wine tasting at the Crewe Hall. Some 250 prestigious wines, spirits and champagnes are available for tasting, many of which are new additions to the RDW portfolio of over 1200 products. Suppliers and growers are also on hand to present their products, answer questions and give advice, some of whom will travel from Europe and the Southern hemisphere. Master classes are also hold by wine experts.

My friend and I did the Sunday night spa deal here which is £120 each for 1 night's stay, use of…read morethe spa (you can arrive before check-in), two 25-minute treatments, lunch, pimms and strawberries and cream, and £28 each towards food at dinner. On top of that I paid £28 for an extra treatment (they gave me 20% off because it was a last minute booking). Crewe Hall is a very impressive building and as it was so quiet (we guessed Sunday might be their least busy night with few weddings or business events) we were able to look at many of its magnificent rooms. None of the rooms in the old part of the hotel were set up for guests to have a drink in though, which was a real shame. In the morning I saw the room next to the reception was open as some kind of lounge - I don't know why we couldn't access it on the Sunday but it seems to defeat the point of having the hotel in such a nice old building that you can't use it! Our room was in the modern block and was very comfortable, the sheets were very soft and we had the benefit both of nice big corner windows and effective black out curtains. The bathroom was modern and clean. The spa itself is nice. It does not have a very luxury feel - the brown bathrobes are a bit threadbare and the decor is not of the highest quality but it is peaceful and aside from the treatment beds being quite small (my 5'11 frame was hanging off the end!) well set up, apart from you have to walk outside to get there. My treatments were really good and the lady that did them was so nice and made it a really relaxing and pleasant experience. She was brilliant at the massage (which was enhanced by having the salt and oil scrub first, so my skin felt really smooth) and the facial felt amazing - my skin felt so refreshed afterwards. My friend reported exactly the same with her treatments. The pool is quite big - you can do proper lengths - although the acoustics are terrible so if people are crawling up and down it becomes super noisy which isn't very restful for those in the sauna and steam rooms which otherwise were particularly good - large, clean and hot! Service in the hotel in general is friendly and helpful although occasionally inattentive - they failed to get us any drinks during lunch, for example. The only thing we were really disappointed with was the food. This deal would be great value if the food was even just average but it's pretty poor. The lunchtime buffet was a bit weird - strange salad options like potato salad with capers and cold boiled rice with a few olives thrown in, and the only hot options was four different types of curry! What if you don't like curry?! We don't mind it but it's not ideal for a spa lunch. The taste itself wasn't great in any case. Profiteroles for dessert were quite nice but what I thought was a lemon tart turned out to be banana - might be helpful to mark options that aren't obvious because it was a shame to waste it. Overall I think for Sunday lunch they would far better off with a carvery, although for reasons explained below I would not trust them to do a good job. Our pimms was nice and the strawberries were fine although not great that they came straight from the refrigerator. Dinner was not great. We got a cheap bottle of red wine that was very drinkable but the food was not enjoyable. We tried the calamari and goats cheese balls to start. The former came with only three pieces for £6.50 which is rubbish value and weren't crisply fried either. The goats cheese balls were only about an inch in diameter and you only get two for £6.50! They did however taste really good. For mains I had the most tasteless pork belly I've had (which I picked because I thought surely this always has flavour!) plus some lukewarm mashed potato and insipid gravy. My friend got a spinach and feta pie which sounded nice but looked like it had been cooked hours earlier and apparently tasted bad. It was supposed to come with buttered new potatoes but instead just got some really unappealing looking plain quite big potatoes. Her side of chips was good but came with bad ketchup! We then got a warm chocolate brownie for dessert. We had to laugh as it came on a stone cold plate with strawberries and bits of honeycomb. To make a dessert dish like this partially in advance is so weird - it's not like there was fancy presentation of the sauce or anything. The main result is just that the honeycomb is cold and a bit soft! Breakfast was better with a wide selection including pastries, a fruit bar and cooked items but things like sausages and hash browns weren't done particularly well - former obviously cheap and hash browns a bit dry and not crisp. They confirmed the overall impression of the food being done for the absolutely cheapest price possible with loads of shortcuts being taken. Although £120 is good value for the room and spa alone, I would hesitate to go back because it takes away from the experience to have bad food.

I'm a real fan of this place…read more A flat carpark, through the orangery entry, and suddenly, up. The place is filled will green, huge hollow rhododendrons, wooden steps, follies, tunnels, rocks coloured with copper and branches arching, dripping with berries. The root covered paths are lined with raspberry and bramble bushes, and beautiful views off cliffs and through expanses of corn off to the horizon, leading to caves, grottos and arches. The twisting old trees are fit for tolkien, and I think I'm right in bits of Narnia being filmed here. It's a lot of unavoidable steps, so unsuitable for wheelchairs and prams unfortunately. Best on a dry day to avoid slippery rocks and carved steps, wear sensible shoes, take a bottle of a water and a torch (some tunnels are purposely not lit) and I'd also advise a picnic, partly because picnics are the best thing ever, but also because the tea room is pants!

Wow what a place.... Caves, ravines and a lovely walk through great scenery some of which is…read morelooking over a fantastic golf course I think I would like to play. I've uploaded a picture of my partner as we headed up the ravine.

On 30th August 2006, I had the graat job of being a bridesmaid to my cousin at The Moat House, and…read moreI found it a lovely place. It is about 10 miles from Rugeley. The grounds are lovely, where the hotel is set in the village of Acton Trussell. There is a pond with loads of ducks in it and they kept getting in the way of the photographs! The hotel is set by a canal and you can see the long boats going by from the Acton Suite, where the wedding took place. The staff were ever so friendly and helpful, serving your food, and changing the room round for the different parts of the day very quickly. I did not stay in one of the rooms over night, b ut I was told by a family member that it was excellent and so was the included breakfast the following day. We had a 3 course meal after the ceremony, drink after the ceremony, bbq in the evening with a disco. If you are planning a wedding, I would reccomend this place for it. It was a lovely day.

Stayed for two nights to break up a trip North and it turned out to be a great decision. The hotel…read moregrounds are beautiful, with a small lake, nice buildings and ducks and swans everywhere. We had great weather and the opportunity to sit outside (they have a nice garden area inside the building with the rooms) was fantastic. Also, the pub has tables by the pond and great to get a drink, we even had dinner, next to the water with the ducks walking among the tables. Rooms are comfortable but not exceptional. Service is friendly. Despite the beautiful grounds, the walking trails near the hotel, including along a channel, are underwhelming. I was also not that impressed with the nearby towns but the RAF Museum, 30 mins away, is worth an afternoon.

The Swan Hotel is a perfect little spot to stay in should you find yourself in Stafford for a few…read moredays, as I did. It's got a great location, smack dab in the middle of things, you're never too far from your hotel. It's charming and the rooms are much larger than I had anticipated-- big bathroom as well. Everything was very clean and tidy. Staff was warm and friendly and ready to help at a moment's notice. It is an older building, so you will encounter some sloping floors in places and there isn't any AC in the rooms which was slightly problematic during the heatwave we encountered. I didn't get under the blankets once to sleep and the one meager fan in the room was expected to do quite a bit of heavy lifting to try and keep things reasonable. Loved having a pub downstairs for coffee and libation anytime of the day. I'd definitely stay again, just hopefully during a cooler spell!

Been here quite a few times now, went there for lunch last weekend, and back in march for my…read morebrothers 21st birthday with a group of 9 of us. THE BIRTHDAY amazing food (the scotch eggs are particularly sexy- I never thought I would say that about a neat wrapped egg, but hey) Super understanding of my little Nanna's dietary requirements, and didn't bat an eyelid at my dad looking like a nutter trying to independently move his eyebrows. Sharing platter puds are rather to die for too. The also brought a little slate (#wewantplates!) of handmade chocolates with candles in for my brother too. Nice wine list, my only complaint would be, around 30% of the staff were seriously grumpy, luckily though this was mostly outweighed by the other wonderful 70% THE LUNCH club sandwich and blackcurrant and soda (because this girl loves a drink that takes like medicine!) took a while, and was mostly lovely, but I have never seen so much mayonnaise in one place, it was how I met your mother erickson layered salad overkill!!