Battle Villas

We chose the Powder Mill to celebrate our 30th Wedding Anniversary and had a mixed experience. Let me start with the positives. It is a charming hotel with a lot of Character. Our room was spacious and the bed comfortable. We had an excellent meal in the restaurant and a lovely breakfast. The staff were attentive and friendly. Now for the bad stuff. When we entered our room we were overpowered by the awful stench of drains! I am not exaggerating the smell was really bad. We opened the patio doors but the smell lingered and did not dissipate. The source was easily found by following our noses into the bathroom. The water drain in the shower had hair and a lot of grey sludge in it. It had clearly not been cleaned for a very long time! Basic housekeeping you would have thought. I reported it to reception and received an apology and was told that it would be reported. But he did not seem shocked as I'm sure it must have been reported before. As I walked away from reception I heard the next customer report a similar experience. We had discovered that there was not a single towel in our room, again basic housekeeping. I went to reception to report this and request that the omission be rectified. The young lady went into the next room and upon her return I expected to be told that ”housekeeping had been notified and towels would immediately be sent to our room”. Imagine my surprise when I was presented with a pile of towels that I was expected to carry the 200 yards back to my room. A walk that was outside and up a long flight of steps! As mentioned above our meal in the restaurant was lovely but the service was extremely slow. There was a corporate event taking place in the next room and that clearly was given priority. After ordering our desserts a waitress came over apologised that there would be a delay and admitted that it was because the kitchen had a corporate event to deal with. The delays were not a problem as we enjoy each others company and were after all celebrating our anniversary.