Classic Lodges - The White Swan

Staff very helpful from the moment we arrived the food was lovely & the room was clean and tidy.

The location and history of the hote

Location was good for my visit to Alnwick Gardens. Room and bed were comfortable. The hotel is 3 miles from Alnmouth Railway station. Regular public bus service to Alnwick , taxi is £15 each way on a Sunday. The walk to and from Alnmouth station is really good, takes about 90 minutes. I used the bus from the station to Alnwick and walked to catch my train home on my return.

Nothing bad to say excellent rooms / breakfast/ bar and staff 👍👍

Situation and staff

Location in central of town and easy parking

The staff were brilliant, friendly and welcoming.
Nice big room. Great blackout curtains.
Amazing, tasty food.
Great base location.
Loads of parking close by (if you can't get in the hotel carpark) and mostly free 24 hour spaces.
I would definitely stay here again 😊

Location excellent for all of Alnwick, and buses run from nearby to local places and further afield.
Several good eating and drinking places in town.
Smallish car at rear is free but is first come first served. There is a public car park across road behind hotel and this is free for 24 hours. Useful if you take your car out and there is no space on return.
Breakfast good and usual fare but limited cereal and fruit choices.

Good location. Easy access to major attractions. Friendly staff.

Room

Very friendly. Staff very helpful

Excellent staff. Most helpful. The dining room was magnificent.

The hotel reception is lovely, staff were so helpful and welcoming.
The issue was our room, a double bed pushed into the corner against the wall so everytime I needed to get up I had to shuffle down the bed and woke my husband up.
In addition, the base wasnt together properly and the headboard seemed to be broken or not fitted properly. The mattress springs could be felt down one side.
I probably slept about 4hrs, really not ideal.

We got a two night deal here with Dinner B&B, cream tea and entry to the castle. Firstly the good bits!!..Staff were friendly, and no problems booking in. There was a large coach party in, which meant meal times the first night were altered to accomodate, whch was Ok.

Our room was right at the back of the hotel, a considerable distance from reception, but no help was offered with our bags. We also did not get the cream tea on offer. The receptionist never offered it, and we were too busy with the bags before we noticed it. Second, the room was Ok, clean, quiet and everything worked, so no real issues.

Problems started on our first night in the dinning room. We ordered at 7pm, and we were sat for 35 min before we saw any food. I don't want to dwell, but our main courses were for want of a better word abysmal.

My wife had lasagna, which was slopped on the plate with an excuse of a side salad. She said it lacked flavour and was only lukewarm. My duck ( Confit duck leg ) was supposed to have roast potato, but in fact they were unpeeled boied spuds which look like they had just been put in an overn for a few minutes. They were soggy and grey, along with the lukewarm vegatable, again which looked like they had been cooked to an inch of their life and re-warmed. The duck was edible, but by this time I had lost all appetitie. My wife had fruit salad for dessert which was OK, and the Blood Orange Pannacotta tart appeared to have been bought in and was passable.

We complained and the restaurant manager was most apologetic and offerd to replace the meal and gave us coffee. We had been put off by this time. We cancelled the next nights booked meal time and went to a local indian restaurant and had a great meal!!. Breakfasts were OK for us as we just had toast and cerials. I was not going to eat the cooked food!!.

Well the hotel is central, Alnwyk is a nice place, but we will never book there again. If you must; just eat somewherte else!!

The location is great. The dining room is stunning!
Free parking is a bonus

This is for a visit that will not be happening - we visited the White Swan a couple of years ago as part of a small touring group and was impressed - the Olympic Restaurant, above average meals etc so it seemed a good idea to stop over en route to Scotland. All booked in April. Now I get an email advising the restaurant has been taken over by a big group hence we will be stuck in the bar for a meal or have to go elsewhere and lump it. Cancelled as the the Unique Selling Point has been denied us so we may as well go to the Premier Inn.

Quite shocked by the positive reviews here...have to wonder about the veracity. This was probably the worst UK hotel stay we have have in many years. Please note it appears that much of their custom now appears to come from coach trips...who notoriously drive down the price they pay with a likely knock on effect on standards..

Lets start with some positives. Some staff were great..the barman and a breakfast staff who notice we had not been served and clearly not just anxious to do a good job but excellent at being'hospitable'. We were also pleasantly surprised when got an instance email confirmation about a dinner booking. That's the best we can offer.

On arrival the receptionist couldn't initally be bothered to get up from her desk. She also rather reluctant to tell us what was included the rate we paid.

We booked the Warkworth suite. Don't be taken in by the website pictures. Apart from being beyond dated it was dirty..especially the bath. The bath didn't look as though cleaned, hairs everywhere, stained tiling, broken fitting. We were amused by a sign in the lobby saying 'we pride ourselves in our cleanliness'! But worse this was during the heat wave but the room curtains had been left open for the balzing afternnon sun to warm the room.

Then it got worse. We went to dinner. Their was just a limited Table D'hote menu of 4 items per course.....great we approve of that..things should be fresh. Strangely it was unpriced...it's £35...OK by todays standards, though wines were on the top markup limit.

It was by far the worse restaurant meal we have had at that price point EVER.
Even if ignore the quality the 'chef' clearly does not know that people eat with their eyes. We felt we in a poor quality care home.

But the quality of every course was poor. The so called Beef Bourigon on long grain rice with salad was looked like cat food dumped on cheap rice with a few sprigs thrown on. Just awful. Quite remarkably the sticky toffe pudding...the desserts were of that style...had a 'toffe' sauce that ran like water.

I paid for dinner...you have to go to the bar (so-called UK hospitality) to be shocked to find a 10% service charge had been added, including on the 350% mark-up wine...meaning the service cahrge on the wine had paid for half the bottle. The clearly got rather annoyed when I removed that part applicable to the wine.

Breakfast was basic , limited, but OK....would you not expect on the Northumberland coast to offfer kippers?

The advertise themselves as asuitable place for a romantic getaway. As my wife said...if you brough me here there would be romance and divorce papers would follow.