Celebrating half a century in style

2:12pm Friday 1st February 2008

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IF I say so myself, my husband's 50th birthday present was a great success. A couple of weeks ago I wrote that I was planning to whisk him away to a smart hotel for the big event and, luckily, I did indeed eventually find somewhere suitable for the occasion - although in this case the building was actually celebrating something closer to its 500th year.

That made him feel a lot better about notching up a half century.

I must admit that before we arrived I was worried. In the past we've had some terrible experiences when booking hotels for special occasions.

Just last year for example, when we celebrated my husband's birthday rather belatedly we ended up smack in the middle of the Suffolk's premier Burn's Night event complete with bagpipes and a hotel set menu that featured more haggis-based dishes than a non-Scot could possibly digest.

On my own birthday several years ago we were shown to a room in the basement of a Cornish hotel that had actually been carved out of a cliff face.

Leaving aside the fact that the wall had moss growing on it and that the only window was the size of pocket diary and higher than my husband's head, what upset us most was that our accommodation was directly beneath the staff quarters - a place where assorted young waitresses, barmen and chambermaids gathered after their shifts to party til dawn to the great sound of goth-rock at its gloomiest.

Having booked a holiday at this supposedly three-star establishment at least a couple of months in advance, we felt quite aggrieved to find ourselves consigned to what appeared to be a cave with an ensuite shower and disco.

We did the unthinkable for Brits on holiday and asked to be moved to a different room the very next day.

The hotelier pointed out that she liked to keep her best rooms available to show "passing trade", but we countered that unless we were switched to somewhere more like a bedroom and less like Wookey Hole our trade would be passing out of the hotel pronto.

Keeping the best rooms free to entice on-spec customers seems to be a regular ruse in the hotel world. Once the proprietors have your booking and deposit they feel confident enough to allot you one of their least impressive rooms.

Another of our most memorable mini breaks (for all the wrong reasons) involved a charming and fairly well-known country hotel dating back to the 15th Century.

Its key appeal lay in the fact that it was extremely ancient and character-packed. It also boasted four stars on its website.

Just imagine our surprise on arrival to be marched straight through the lovely atmospheric beamed sitting room and bar area, out through the back door and across the car park to a modern concrete annexe that resembled a down-at-heel Travelodge.

Not only was our room at the top of the fire-escape completely beam-free, it was utterly character-free too and reeked of stale cigarette smoke, despite our request for a non-smoking room.

Emboldened by our experience in Cornwall we went straight back to reception and asked to be changed, only to be told that a wedding was taking place at the hotel that weekend and all the rooms in the main building were taken.

Considering that we'd booked what was euphemistically described as a "superior room" at least two months in advance, we felt quite within our rights to demand our deposit back and take pot luck elsewhere.

Then there was the time in Edinburgh when we arrived at our hotel in the dark after an eight-hour train journey in the depths of winter, only to find that the team on reception had accepted a last-minute coach party block booking and were now frantically moving other pre-booked guests to alternative locations in the city.

I can't tell you how much we enjoyed the cab ride across Edinburgh in the early hours to a mystery location.

I can't tell you because it was horrible, nerve-wracking and infuriating.

On the plus side we ended up staying at a smart new boutique hotel that hadn't even officially opened to guests yet. On the minus side we were too tired, cold, disoriented and angry to appreciate it.

I could go on.

I could write about the time I cried at the rep's "welcome party" at a hotel in Sorrento after being shown to a bedroom so bereft of comfort that it appeared to have been designed by Dr. Mengele.

And then there was the posh hotel I stayed in for a work-related conference where the fire alarm went off accidentally four times during the night, necessitating trips down to the safety' of the car park in where we shivered in the cold march air until being given the all clear to return to our beds by the apologetic night manager.

So, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised last weekend when we arrived at the beautiful and romantically ancient hotel I'd chosen as the perfect place to ease my husband over his half-century milestone.

Our room with its four-poster, panelling, Victorian sofa and fireplace was exactly what I'd hoped for.

"We seem to have luckout for once" I remarked smugly to my delighted spouse as we unpacked and got ready for dinner.

It was only when we returned from a gorgeous birthday meal that things took a turn for the worse.

As we tumbled into bed in a well-fed and slightly drunken haze, we realised that we could both hear something much louder than Harry Hill's TV Burp which was currently showing on the rather anachronistic flatscreen TV on the chest by our bed.

Indeed, the wart-hog snoring of the man in the bedroom next door reverberated through our room so loudly that at 1.30am we were forced to pad reluctantly down to reception to ask to be moved.

As the night porter helped us with our (temporary) move he listened, astonished, to the great leathery bellows working away in the room next door and admitted: "I've heard some snoring in my time here, but that's extraordinary".

Luckily the wart-hog checked out next morning and we moved back. We were snore-free the next night when his room was occupied by a young couple with a baby (!) who were all completely soundless.

As I settled our bill on the last day, the girl at reception said: "I heard what happened. I'm so sorry. But what we all can't work out is that he had a wife in there with him too."

Presumably a stone deaf one.