A mammoth undertaking

My work seems to go in cycles, depending on what projects I’m working on. A few years ago, I was involved in an equipment trial down at our Hampshire office, and spent a lot of time staying at a hotel that could easily have passed for Fawlty Towers. But the last few years, I’ve been running a project based up here in Malvern, and have managed to organise most of the meetings at locations that are easier for me. However, all good things come to an end, that project’s now finished, and I found myself summoned to an early morning meeting on a new programme, down at the Hants HQ. Since I really wasn’t keen on another very early morning start, it was easier to go down the night before and stay at Fawlty Towers once more.

It’s been over three years since I was last there, and it seems to have had a something of a makeover or refurbishment in the mean time. I was put in a room I’ve stayed in many times before, and it had certainly been redecorated and looked much fresher. However, there was no armchair, only a horribly uncomfortable desk chair, the shower pressure was still as crap as I remembered it, and the sound insulation between adjacent rooms was still dreadful. So not all good news.

The restaurant still boasts that it’s by Marco Pierre White, which given all the tabloid fuss about his family recently isn’t necessarily something one would want to boast about. But I’m still unconvinced that he’s done much more than look casually at the menu – he certainly had nothing to do with the cooking of my burger and chips, and the chocolate and passionfruit mousse sounded a great deal better than it tasted. However, it was a perfectly adequate stay, in one of the few places that’s moderately convenient for the office HQ and meets the tight cost constraints that the company dictates. I suspect that I’ll end up staying there again, should this project take off. Oh well.