Hotel berhampiran Tarbert Castle, Tarbert

We arrived soaked after a lengthy bike ride and wanted to get into a warm bedroom as quickly as possible. There was no-one on reception and instead I had to wait rather too long for one of the overworked waiting-on staff to appear and check us in. The room was cold. There was no information at all so we weren’t able to get any heat with asking further. We were also advised to not even bother with the towel rail as none of them worked in the hotel. All far from ideal when you’re trying to dry out soaking clothes. The tap was very loose and worst of all there was a huge crack right across the seat of the toilet. Totally unhygienic. I mentioned it when we went down again and was thanked for telling them - but it clearly wasn’t going to be fixed for us. The room should stayed unused until it had been fixed. There was also only one, tiny shower gel and one tiny shampoo between the two of us. You get the picture. The food in the Seabed Restaurant was reasonable but was not a patch on the standard when we ate there last two years ago.

On arriving, we were welcomed by Alex who was charming and profession. He showed us to room 19 which turned out to be in a 1950s extension block. The room looked like it had recently been refurbished to a degree with a clean and updated bathroom. The bed although in two and linked together was a medium firm one and comfortable and the pillows were ok too which is a positive. The view from the room, being on the loch side was impressive. That evening we decided to eat in the Resturant which is also in a 1950s extension and in my opinion too big and soulless. The music was along to playing death metal music at a funeral. It was not conducive to a formal dining setting. We both had beetroot smoked salmon with apple. The salmon was far too light a flavour for me and it wasn’t a balanced dish. There was some oats of sort sprinkled on it and that added no flavour just confusion. We then had muscle and monk fish tail dishes. Whilst the muscles were tasty, it was an extremely over priced dish and the two small bread roles “plonked” on top of them without any bread knife, side plate or butter was an interesting concept. The monk fish came with succotash. The succotash was bland and the monk fish over salted. No bread, with this one ! So on the whole the food was edible, expensive and bland. Breakfast on the face of it was ok but often they didn’t have many of the dishes. The food quality at breakfast appeared of lower standard in my opinion as for the scrambled eggs I hate them over scrambled and that’s just what they were and why on earth everything has to come with pea shoots on it god only knows. Now for the room in more detail. Staying there in October brought with it a major challenge. The room was freezing cold to the point we used a hairdryer to take the chill off. It wasn’t the cleanest of rooms either with a large amount of dust. Next to the room was a fire exit and that was covered in bird droppings and the laundry rooms along the corridor leading to room 19 looked dirty too. The hotel is really a tale of 2 halves. The original beautiful one and the unloved eyesore. The picture I have added of the beautiful part ! In essence this hotel needs staff and management to look at the hotel and guest experience from the eyes of the customers because that’s the only way this hotel will improve. Does it need to? Well with occupancy of this hotel I would say perhaps not however all that means is it’s resting in its laurels and isn’t looking to improve.

Fabulous Views and great Atmosphere. We spent a brilliant Sunday afternoon sitting in the sun,outside, watching the world sail by. The staff were super nice and helpful so we decided to come back and have an evening meal. Food was very good, well presented and lots of local choice. (We watched their hens laying eggs on the Sunday afternoon so we knew they were as fresh as they could possibly be11) The owners were on site and chatted away and are, quite rightly so, very proud of their hotel and what they have achieved. The staff were also proud of their workplace and were well informed of the locality. Next time we visit the area we will definately book into the Kames Hotel

On this journey the staff at The Grey Gull Hotel was very welcoming and for this reason the service provided was helpful. This room was small and grumbling and had all sorts of thing from what one needed for a comfortable one day stay after touring all the sites in the city. This was boosted by their friendly reception and also wardrobe most of which demonstrated that they wished to ensure that our stay with them was very comfortable, which it was, with little or no complaint.