لوين أون جيست هاوس

Quaint house. Clean spaces. Every morning, the ladies fusses over what they can get you for breakfast. Feels like being at a grandmother's house.

The garden of this B&B is lovely, and we enjoyed sitting in it on the night we stayed there. Unfortunately, the rest of the experience was so awful that we and our travel companions decided to cut our losses and go elsewhere rather than stay the second night that we had all booked and paid for. The owner’s rudeness had begun when we phoned a few days before (as she requested) to request non-dairy milk at breakfast for a guest who has a dairy allergy. She made it clear on the phone and throughout our stay that this was more trouble and expense than she should be expected to go to. She scoffed at a question about whether the scrambled eggs were made with milk, cream, or butter, and said she had never heard of such a thing. “Whoever does that?” she asked. (Quite a lot of chefs, actually, which is why we politely double check before ordering them.) We arrived on a hot day to find a stifling and smelly room (think old folks’ home with a side of febreeze) with a broken shower. A note said that we should shower in another room, several doors away, if our shower was broken. Our shower was indeed broken, but we decided to forego the pleasure of going down the corridor to wash, and had a bath instead. That was okay, once we had calculated the exact rate of flow needed from the tap to counteract the leaking plug and keep water in the bath. The bathroom was also smelly. The bedding smelled strongly of cheap fabric conditioner, and one of our towels had a stain which looked suspiciously like a spot of old blood. There were shabby notes with rules everywhere. No takeaways, no hot food in the room, no turning the radiator up (though no chance of that – it was already like an oven). Breakfast was a particular highlight. Despite saying on the website that we could have breakfast from 7.30, the information set out upon arrival said that it didn’t begin until 8.15. We went down for that time, but didn’t get our Welsh breakfast until just before nine. We were told that the promised oat milk had been bought, but had been left in a neighbour’s house, so it was another wait until that was retrieved. I’m delighted to report that we did get the oat milk, which brings me to the other positive aspect of our stay – the lovely lady, apparently a neighbour filling in because so many staff have (unsurprisingly) left, who made our breakfast. She managed to remain cheerful despite being micromanaged by the owner, Moyra, whose role seems to be to go from table to table, upsetting guests on her way by explaining how their requests and/or complaints are unreasonable. Her gems included: (When we asked for a fan, because the room was so hot in one of the UK’s heatwaves). “Only if you don’t leave it on all night, because it costs too much.” (When we replied to this by pointing out that we were paying a lot to stay there – we paid £100 per room per night). “No, you’re not. Everywhere else is more expensive.” She did put a small fan in our room, which we found when we retur

Amazing hospitality. Immaculately clean. Comfortable and well equipped room. Welsh breakfast was delicious. Quiet beautiful surroundings.