Grimstock Country House Hotel

I stayed here for 2 nights whilst on a business trip used to staying in chain hotels I was looking forward to an independent hotel especially with a title of ‘Country House Hotel’.
The hotel is very outdated, my room was on the ground floor and smelt a little damp. I had to ask to have the heating on they turn it on from the reception desk?! This happened throughout my 2 night stay the heating would turn itself off and I would have to call reception to turn it back on again. Very strange and also annoying that you can’t control it yourself!
On my first nights stay, I noticed the mattress was fairly hard and bumpy, it was probably quite old. It had no proper mattress cover to cushion the mattress. Also, the sound along the corridor and between rooms travels very easily. My neighbours bathroom was right next to my bed head, so I could hear them washing and flushing the toilet late at night. Once nodding off, I realised every 2 minutes or so I could hear a faint banging sound and couldn’t work out what it was.
Having taken me a long time to get to sleep, I was woken up at 4:30am as it was so cold due to the heating in my room being turned off. I also noticed the strange banging sound was still going on I called reception to get the heating turned on and was told it doesn’t come on till 6am.
The place is clean it just could do with a bit of a lift /​revamp, it shocked me a little at how dated everything is both in the rooms and the restaurant. There was however a flat screen tv in the room which looks new and works great with lots of channels and a kettle to make drinks. I noticed on my second evening when returning to the room, they hadn’t actually washed my teacup properly as there were tea stains in it they’d obviously just rinsed it in my sink
The hotel provides complimentary wi-​fi which is a good speed.
The staff are really friendly you can’t really fault the service (although I did wait a good 10 minutes to have my order taken at the restaurant when dining alone, that is not ok!). The second night I had room service, partly because the receptionist seemed unwilling to take one diner through to the restaurant at 6:45pm (I was told dinner was served from 6:30).
The restaurant was however really disappointing on the first night so I didn’t mind too much, although the thought of staying in the damp room all evening was a little depressing. The menu has a good selection but a large selection of it seems to be wrapped in bacon! I was given a complimentary roll with butter and a ‘free starter’ which was a tiny little taster of ham hock. A tasty surprise but nothing special.
I had stuffed mushrooms to start these were wrapped in bacon the bacon was fatty, chewy and not pleasant at all, I had to leave most of it. Not a great recipe really disappointed with that.
For main I had ‘Chicken Fondant’ again, disappointing. the skin looked tasty but was soggy, really confused as to what they’d done with this chicken. It was very ‘tender’, like it had been poached or soaked in water prior to cooking but left a strange taste to the meat. The potato fondant was strange and unpleasant essentially undercooked, plain mashed potato in a log shape. The one good thing was a gorgeous flavoured purée on the plate, definitely wasn’t enough of that.
I ordered a side salad of rocket and parmesan with bacon as the main doesn’t come with veg. It was ok, but not a very refined dish and the bacon could have been done better /​used lardons. There were crutons too, and after half of them I realised they just tasted like oily fried bread.
Not one to leave anything on my plate, unfortunately in this instance I did.