Calcot Manor, Gloucestershire: hotel review

By Fiona Duncan 324PM GMT 09 March 2010

Previous of Images Next Double bedrooms are in the manor; family bedrooms disremember the outside pool; suites are in a prolonged construction with in isolation gardens Calcot Manor has 35 guest bedrooms and a gorgeous, just-revamped sauna The "country modern" bedrooms conduct to be both cosy and elegant, balmy and spoiling, healthy and worldly

Nothing miserly about this place What is it about a road residence that creates you know you"re going to love it prior to you"ve even checked in? As she steers us towards the main entrance, my crony Lui, undeterred by naff drive lights ("reminds me of a Tesco car park") and boring signposts for spa, reception, deliveries and so on, has a tummy feeling about Calcot Manor. Sensing road residence nirvana, she has to be swayed to stop rubbing off her hands in joviality and put them behind on the wheel. "This is going to be great", she keeps saying. How right she is.

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Lui is a great chairman to move to Calcot Manor, since she additionally came with me on a new revisit to Babington House. Both are glorious examples probably the glorious of oppulance nation residence hotels that interest as most to family groups as to couples. She appreciated Babington, but she didn"t love it. "It"s tough to be over 50 there," she says, "but here you can be any age you like, and any type."

This is loyal there are extremely posh voices at the list subsequent to ours at dinner, nonetheless I not long ago met a London cabbie who took his family there, and had the time of his life. Parents with toddlers, grandparents, loved-up couples they all fit in.

What"s the secret? Calcot Manor has grown, altered and changed with the times for dual simple, but hard-to-replicate reasons the handling director, Richard Ball, knows what he"s doing, and the owner, a guest who paid for the hotel, provides the investment for him to do it.

It was Ball"s relatives who, in 1984, initial incited Calcot, with the weathered-stone estate residence and plantation buildings, in to a seven-bedroom hotel. Today it has 35 guest rooms, a gorgeous, just-revamped spa, a duty centre in a converted barn, dual restaurants and an Ofsted-registered crèche in the children"s Playzone.

Double bedrooms are in the manor; family bedrooms disremember the outside pool; suites, for family groups or couples, are in a long, low construction with tidy in isolation gardens bordered by an American-style white picket blockade that reminds Lui and me a small of Desperate Housewives.

There"s something incredibly relaxing about this hotel, with "country modern" bedrooms that conduct to be both cosy and elegant, balmy and spoiling, healthy and sophisticated. By the time we solve in pappy sofas in front of the fire, Lui, the pickiest chairman on the planet, is marked down to a waving preserve of appreciation. Even when she asks the waiter to report the assorted mixture that have up her main course, his extravagantly inaccurate, seat-of-the-pants guesswork fails to bleed a disastrous remark. "Those, madame, are mushrooms," he tells her. Braised oxtail, actually.

The following day is one of devotedly attached tranquillity in the airy, easy-going spa. By right away Lui has utterly lost the plot, and when it"s time to go home, she refuses to leave, cancels all and treats us both to an additional night. It"s overtly that good.

Near Tetbury (01666 890391; www.calcotmanor.co.uk) Doubles from �240, together with breakfast. Access probable for guest with disabilities. More reviews by Fiona Duncan at thehotelguru.com .

Telegraph rating (out of five)

ROOMS TTTTT

Would fit anyone; glorious baby-listening use

SERVICE TTTT

Cuddly internal ladies portion breakfast supplement to the modest feel

CHARACTER TTTTT

A road residence that"s all gentle "in the skin"

FOOD & DRINK TTTT

"Absolutely delicious"

VALUE FOR MONEY TTTTT

Nothing miserly about this place