In which I get excessively cross about the ugliness

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Rushing south for various reasons, I decide that life is earnest and life is real and I just can't justify stopping off at some chic little inn in the Lake District but must bite the bullet and do what millions of ordinary decent Britons do, and break my journey at a motorway motel. The credit crunch is biting hard, and my days of being a hotel queen are over. (I sometimes have actual dreams about the days when I used to check into the Carlyle for a week, or the time I snuck into the Bel Air for three days and did not tell anyone where I was; I never felt so much like an International Woman of Mystery in my life.) But it is time to welcome myself to the real world, and it is good for me to stop behaving like a complete flake for once.

Thank heaven there is the wonderful Tebay, the only civilised service area on the M6, which has ducks and a farm shop and a nice hotel, only a little more expensive than a Travelodge, but has managed to decorate its rooms with actual style, as you can see below. (I am sorry the pictures are so small, I cannot seem to magnify them in any way. Stare closely at the screen for the full effect.)


The Westmoreland at Tebay has done a very clever thing. The sheets and towels are a little thin, as you would expect from a motorway stop, but someone has given more than ten minutes' thought to aesthetics. The rooms are painted in a nice Farrow and Ball taupish sagish colour, the curtains are a wonderful thick felt material, in dark claret, and the carpet is a very nice biscuit. When you get off the road after three hundred miles, your retinas are not assaulted by horror. Also, the bathrooms are very elegant indeed.

But, hideous shock, Tebay is FULL. I must plunge into the terrors of the Holiday Inn Express and the Travelodge. I call my mother. 'Can I really stay at the Days Inn in Charnock Richard?' I say. 'Yes,' she says, firmly. 'You astonish me,' I say. 'The dogs will like it,' she says, obscurely. Then she becomes rather excited. I must, apparently, take all my lovely travel rugs and my own pillows and scented candles and some room spray ('have you got lavender for the bed?' she says) and I can make the room heaven and feel smug that I have only paid £29. By the end of the conversation, we decide that it is a tremendous idea.

Then I look at the website:

Oh, I know it's not the worst bedroom in the world. But bear in mind if this is the picture they put up on the web, this is the best they have to offer. We all know that the actual room might not live up even to this. And there is something so demoralising about it. So I cast around. I find a Holiday Inn:

Again, it's not the ugliest thing in the world. But there is nothing in there that you would want to take home with you. You would not decorate your own bedroom like that. What is wrong with some nice claret curtains and a bit of biscuit?

Then there is the Premier Inn, which actually looks quite smart:

But I stopped at a Premier Inn on the Birmingham toll road once and it was all orange, so much it hurt my eyes, and the room smelt slighlty of mushrooms.

So then there was the Ibis at Preston:

I know. It looks like someone is having a little joke and doing a pastiche of the seventies.

I kept looking at this picture, and feeling sadder and sadder:

And then I thought: damn it, I can't do it. I don't care how many scented candles I bring. It's not just the aesthetic nastiness of these places. If you go to Tripadvisor and type in any chain motel, the theme that that comes up over and over again in the reviews is a sense of neglect. The shower curtain is torn, the grouting in the bathroom is black, the bed was uncomfortable, the lady at the bar would not serve drinks even though it was only one minute past midnight, the wake up call never arrived, the room had not been cleaned, there was mould around the bath, there was a worrying smell, the bedlinen was stained.

And maybe none of this would be so bad if it was only £19, like their websites like to shout. But it is only that if you book three months in advance and arrive on a Tuesday in February. On a Saturday in October it is £55. I must pay £55 to be made sad.

So I used my initiative and many internet hours and finally found a lovely new place in the delightful market town of Kirkby Lonsdale, exactly half way between me and London, ten minutes from the M6. The man could not have been nicer. Of course the dogs were welcome. Nothing was too much trouble. And the price? A knock down £70. For FIFTEEN POUNDS more than the cost of the demoralising rooms above, I get this:

See how much time and care has gone into that room. They have even put a charming leather suitcase under the brass bed, to give you the impression that you might be staying in someone's actual house. There is nothing chi chi or chainish or corporate about it. There is no hint of the Coloroll school of decorating that marrs so many British inns. It is clean and calm. But here is what I really don't understand. How is it that the nice man at Plato's in Kirkby Lonsdale can achieve a room like that, in the middle of a credit crunch (they have only been open for two months), for fifteen pounds more than the soulless nastiness of the Travelodges and the Premier Inns and the Holiday Inns, with all their economies of scale? And why does the great British public not rise up and say we are mad as hell and we are not going to take it any more?

In the meantime, call me old-fashioned, but I am very, very happy that I get to stay here:

Instead of here: