Anniversary Weekend - Evening

We had booked dinner at Rocksalt to see if it was just as good on a second visit, but didn't want to worry about driving home afterwards, so hunted down a deal on a hotel. Unfortunately by the time we looked to book all of Rocksalt's rooms were already booked.

The criteria were... within walking distance of the restaurant, cheap and not on a main road. After looking at a few, we settled on a grand affair with sea views that looked a little like faulty towers, complete with 70s decor.

We were not disappointed when we arrived. the hotel was old and rickety and hadn't been decorated since 1975. There was a bit of a confusion at the desk when I was asked to authorise the room rate on my credit card (which I had already paid for through Hotels.com) but I was assured they weren't going to take payment it was just to prove to Hotels.com that we had arrived and they were entitled to their money.

The room was nice enough and would do for our short stay.

I hadn't quite appreciated that the hotel was right on the top of the cliff and was quite a trek back up the hill after dinner, but going down in heels was much trickier than going back up.

Dinner was amazing. The staff are attentive and friendly without being in your face or intrusive.

Starters were orange smoked pork belly on a bed of lentils and was very tasty.

For main we shared the tomahawk 1kg steak. This came with Bearnaise sauce and watercress and we paired it with some dripping chips and broccoli.

It was cooked to perfection and huge. I couldn't manage all of my chips.

Desert was a blood orange and white chocolate cheesecake which I enjoyed more than Ollie did.

And then with the bill we had this lovely message and some home made blackberry sorbet.

After dinner we went upstairs to their bar to get a drink, but it was a bit busy, the drinks were quite pricey and the final straw was a distinct lack of Jack Daniels! We decided to find a pub on the way back to the hotel. The first pub only had 1 local in it so we gave that a miss. The second pub was rammed and that was all the pubs. Turns out there were some, but not in the direction we walked. We ended up with a drink in the hotel bar, which was nice as they had Silent Pool gin that I had been wanting to try for a while and Jack Daniels.

Unfortunately even though our hotel was on a quiet road, the hotel opposite seemed to be the location of the town's nightlife and people being loud kept us awake until 2am. Then they went quiet, Ollie fell asleep and just as I was drifting off the people in the room above started river dancing on the creaky ceiling. I was very tempted to wake Ollie up and suggest we went home, but they eventually stopped. We were both awake early still and instead of paying the £10 a head for breakfast we elected to drive home and have pancakes there.

It wasn't until I got home that I looked at the paperwork to see that we had indeed paid twice for our room, but a quick email to Hotels.com and they refunded the amount straight away.