Orkney Guest House

The whole house was filthy, cluttered and run down. The rooms had no locks on the doors and my husband had to help the host install one. The bathroom was filthy, with plain evidence of the previous peoples use(to put it politely). The cold tap on the basin did not work and the shower had thick black mould round it. The breakfast room was quite clearly used as the living room of the owners and was full of clutter and laundry, with just a space cleared for us to eat. No choice given at breakfast, we had what the host decided on. Lucky we were happy with fried egg and bacon.

This is rather a difficult review to write. There are many positives about the property so I'll list those first: The location is fabulous. There is parking outside the front door, the town walls are about a minutes walk and the town hall and high street maybe two minutes. Helen is a wonderful host, chatty and knowledgeable. The other side of the coin is that the property is run down, untidy and in severe need of maintenance and updating. I can imagine it is a struggle running a property such as this but if you are going to advertise it as a guesthouse then that's what it needs to be, not a dosshouse. There are other people staying there, and I can imagine the income is a life saver, but they really had no idea how to interact with paying customers. One of them was washing in the sink when we came downstairs and then walk to his room just in his boxers. Not a big issue but again it comes down to which income stream is more important. The house has the potential to be a fabulous boutique B&B but to do so would need a lot of investment. It's not there at the moment.