Hotels and Things

On our way north from Exeter CJ and I made our first stop Ambleside in the English Lake District. It was a place that we both stayed with Mum and Dad and a family friend many years ago when we were teenagers. In fact we spent a lot of time in the Lakes just as our parents (and particularly Mum when she was a very young lady) had done before us. We arrived having failed when we set out to realise that it was the Thursday preceding a Bank Holiday weekend. We were lucky and managed to get accommodation in The Queens Hotel. We were quite surprised at how many things were the same as we remembered them although, of course, much had changed too. No, it has to be said the weather: it was still raining!

The Queens Hotel, Ambleside: excellent service and very good, reasonably priced, food with a marvellous breakfast well cooked from good ingredients. And we had wifi access!

In Dunblane there is an unprepossessing café at the South end of the main street just as you come in off the A9. It is called The Beech Tree. I stop there when I am passing and fancy a coffee because they make it as I like it. Memory is a funny thing. CJ remembers his soup as being less hot than he would have liked it. I like my soup hot and would certainly have sent it back if it wasn't hot enough for me. And I remember it as being ok. How odd.

The Royal Dunkeld Hotel at, not surprisingly, Dunkeld. It had wifi ('though not in the bedroom). However the most charitable thing I can say about the service and food is that it was ok. If I was being truthful I'd probably say that it was mediocre. It was more expensive than The Queens and far poorer value for money. I would usually have stayed at The Atholl Arms but it was full and I'd forgotten than I had it's number in my cellphone.