Converted Old Peoples Home
I used to work in horseracing, for this mob: www.turftrax.co.uk. A couple of years ago, we were up at Doncaster, getting ready for the St. Ledger. Seeing as it was the St. Ledger, there weren't any rooms to be found in our usual hotel, so we were booked into another hotel, in a small town called Thorne. Now, I'm from the Doncaster/Scunthorpe area, and when I heard that we were staying in Thorne, alarm bells began to ring. Thorne is a mining town, with probably the last coal mine in the area. It is also rougher than a badger's arsehole. But, we were willing to give the place the benefit of the doubt, so off we drove at the end of the day. We got there to find that we were staying in what appeared to be an old peoples home that had closed, and had been converted into a B&B. We could tell, as they'd even left the NHS door hangers on the doors! It was atrocious. The rooms hadn't been cleaned, we had been told that the rooms were all en-suite, which is true if you consider a bog & a sink to be a bathroom! I think that there were two working bathrooms between 40-odd rooms, which was no use at all. In the pub later that evening, we shared our horror stories about the place, and we all decided that we were off in the morning. So, first thing, we're all there trooping out with our bags and there's the manager (complete with apron as he was cooking the breakfast) with a shocked look on his face asking us where we were going! We told him in no uncertain terms that the place was a shithole and they'd fed a load of bullshit to our office when the place was booked, and we were off. We ended up having a fry-up in a nice cafe in one of the parks in Doncaster on our way to the course, as there was no way that we were going to trust the food at that place. We called the office and told them that there was no way on earth that we were going back to the place, so they had better sort some other accomodation out for use. I ended up staying at my parents (and doing some serious damage to my dad's collection of single malt whiskey), and the rest of the guys ended up in a travelodge near Retford.

Apart from that place, all the other places we stayed were Ok, the best had to be the Chichester Gate hotel, with huge rooms and a pool!
(Raystorm, Thu 17 Jan 2008, 22:18, Reply)