A hotel to be avoided! (Morpeth in General)

Member Name: jalfredprufrock

Product:	Morpeth in General
Date:	09/06/09 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap

Disadvantages: Where do I start?

To paraphrase the late, great Grouch Marx; I had a wonderful stay in a first class hotel...but this wasn't it!
Two nights in an atmospheric 17th Century coaching Inn in a tranquil Northumbrian market town sounds like just the ticket to unfurl the knotted brow and loosen the Gordian knots of tension in the shoulders. Unless that hotel is The Queen's Head in Morpeth, which just happens to be slap bang above the most god-awful nightclub either side of Hadrian's Wall.
We stayed on a Friday and Saturday night...Friday and Saturday night being the traditional choice for a weekend away falling, as they usually do, at the end of the working week. Unfortunately Friday and Saturday night also appears to be the time when the volume is turned up to 11 in "Vinyl", the nightclub in question. No doubt to serve as a siren call to the monosyllabic knuckle-scraping patrons who view conversation merely as an impediment to well established drinking and mating rituals.
Our room was on the second floor near to the rear of the hotel. Even through several sturdy layers of floors and walls however, the migraine inducing clamour from below kept us awake until almost two in the morning. It was the sort of rhythmic, repetitive rhythm and bass thump that was indiscernible in any way as music, but somehow managed to travel through the entire body from the bones to the hair and make any attempt at sleep impossible. Relief when the torture finally ended was short lived, as it was soon to be replaced for the next hour or so by the traditional chucking out time pastoral chorus of arguing, singing and vomiting, set amidst the merry tinkle of breaking glass.
Conversation at breakfast revealed that virtually every other guest appears to have partaken in the same sleep deprivation experiment. When this was mentioned to the receptionist, it was met with a resigned shrug and the cheery news that it would be even louder the following night...it being Saturday and all. And she wasn't wrong. By this time though, it was clear that the only way to achieve anything resembling sleep was to be thoroughly anaesthetised with the assistance of Mr Glen Fiddich.
This is truly a shame, as otherwise the Queen's Head has a lot to recommend it. Steeped in history with oak panels and sweeping staircases aplenty, Elizabethan décor, a decent breakfast cooked to order and value at sixty quid a room.
We heard rumours of the ghost of a long-dead lady said to wander the corridors at night, but alas never saw her...moved on in search of a good night's sleep I would imagine.
Do visit Morpeth. It's a gentile market town with good local shops and a superb Saturday Farmer's market. It also has the most picturesque riverside park with perfectly tended gardens. But don't stay at The Queen's Head. Unless you're a masochistic chronic insomniac, who enjoys the thrill of seeing your condition thrust upon every other paying guest.

Summary: Visit morpeth...but please don't stay here.