Guest post: hotel review

And now a short hotel review from my good friend Miranda, who went to Augill Castle which is in the Lake District-ish and has this to say about it:

“It was A. Maze.balls.
I mean, not amazeballs like Babbington House is amazeballs, but perfect for a mini adventure with the kids. It’s basically a mini castle – (19th century baronial style not actually ancient or anything) – set amongst rolling hills of baby lambs, tree houses, little wooden forts and dry stone walls. Inside it’s just about the right side of chintzy ie. Turquoise dining room with gold stars on the ceiling, stained glass windows, massive open fires.

It totally did what it said on the tin: lovely playroom full of dressing up stuff / model railways to build / books / games. Mini cinema with cute old retro theatre seats and a choice of about a thousand kids and grownup films.

Everyone eats together – it was only 3 or 4 families all with young children – then the kids just rampage around between playroom, cinema, sitting room and dining room, and the owners seem to actually welcome chaos and noise. Food was nice home cooking, nothing special but not horrid. Kids ate sausages and mash followed by jam roly poly / Mac n cheese followed by jelly and ice cream.
Ah I just loved the whole experience. The countryside up there is PROPER countryside – wild fells, weird shaggy sheep, random blobs of snow on high ground, but also daffodils , primroses and the cutest tiniest leaping baby lambs you ever did see.
Even the drive was quite nice! We listened to audiobooks of Matilda and Fantastic Mr Fox. No one was sick.
I don’t know if Philip enjoyed it as much as me tho as there wasn’t good WiFi and the other guests were a bit pikey and he doesn’t really enjoy meeting strangers and massively over-sharing with other parents etc like I do.”