I was recently in Winchester for my cousins wedding.
My mum had booked three separate rooms at the Southbound Travelodge on the A34 in Winchester. We had originally booked the rooms for two nights but when me and my boyfriend got into London a night earlier, Mum made another separate booking for an extra night for us. When we got to the hotel, we explained that we were also booked in for another two nights after the initial night we were staying, and the lady said there was no problem to keep the same room for all three nights, which was great meaning that we wouldn't have to check out and check in again in the morning to go to a different room.

Since the room was already paid for, checking in was really easy, all we had to do was give our name and then we got the key to our room. The check in desk is straight in front of you as soon as you enter the Travelodge, so no problems in trying to locate the reception.

The Travelodge is situated in a service station. What was quite confusing when we got there, was that the Travelodge sign was actually on the main building where the restaurants and toilets were, so naturally we went in there first, but it turns out that the building was actually about 50 metres away with no sign on it! In the service station is a Little Chef, a Shell petrol station, a little newsagent type shop (where everything is really expensive!) and a Café Tempo.

As soon as we came into the hotel, we notice that the roof was leaking from one of the long, large lights. There were two buckets on the floor and the entire carpet was soaked. It was right in front of the door to the hallway where the rooms are situated, so you sort of had to squeeze past and try not to get dripped on as you went by.

The rooms are pretty standard and generic. I have stayed in Travelodges before and all of the rooms seem to look the same. In our room we had a double bed, this was actually really comfy and gave a good nights sleep. The bed had simple white sheets on it. There was also a kettle, two mugs and a selection of tea and coffee. This consisted of two tea bags, two normal coffee sachets and two decaf coffee sachets, four little tubs of milk and some white and brown sugar.

There was a blue sofa in the room which doubled up as a sofa bed, you could pull out the bottom part and in it was a mattress so that a second or third person could sleep there. There was also a desk and chair, two bedside tables and lamps (one on either side of the bed) and a really good, big mirror. There is a tv in the room which has the normal five channels on it. There was also a working remote for the tv.

The curtains in the room were great. Even though it was really light outside, the heavy curtains shut out all the light and made the room really dark which made it a lot easier to sleep. It was really hot at night though, and since there were window restrictors on the window, it was really hard to cool the room down.

When we went into the bathroom, there were some hairs in our bath. Since the shower head is attached to the wall you can't remove it, so we were trying to throw cups of water to try to flush them away since we didn't really want to wash with them in there. Another thing in the bathroom was that no matter how tightly we tried to turn off the taps, they still seemed to leak! There was also no soap in the bathroom, so we resorted to using shampoo to wash our hands instead. Also, even though they knew there were two of us in the room they had only put one towel in there. We did have our own towels with us though, so this was not such a big problem. The bathroom was well stocked with toilet paper though, so no worries about running out! The only problem was that the flush on the toilet wasn't very strong so it sometimes left the toilet paper in there which was pretty annoying.

There is wireless internet available in the hotel. This did work out to be quite expensive but we did pay for an hour to go online. The prices are £5 for 1hr, £10 for the day, £20 for the week or £160 for a year (you would have to stay there a lot to get your moneys worth!) Obviously it is cheaper the longer that you want to go online, but we only needed an hour so we just paid £5. You pay online with you credit or debit card, it will ask you for your details as soon as you open your internet window.

There is no actual restaurant in the hotel, but we were asked when we checked in if we wanted to buy a breakfast box. These cost £4.50 and included some cereal, flapjack, coffee and a couple of other things. We though £4.50 sounded quite a lot for what it was though, so we decided just to get some sandwiches from the petrol station which worked out cheaper.

The walls in the hotel seemed to be quite thin, you could easily hear people out in the hallway and opening and closing the doors. However, despite being so close to the motorway we didn't hear any outside noise coming in at all.

There are various items available to borrow from reception if you need them. We borrowed the iron to iron a suit and it was falling to pieces and didn't really work that well. Also they didn't have a plaster they could give me after I cut my leg. I thought that was quite bad that they didn't have basic first aid stuff available. The staff were friendly and approachable though. They had no problem refilling our coffee and tea after we had drunk it all on the first day.
There is a car park right next to the hotel for guests to park in. There always seemed to be spaces there so there was no trouble getting parked.

There didn't seem to be any buses running from the service station into Winchester. I guess they expect everyone to have cars if they stay at the hotel. If not then you would be in trouble trying to get anywhere. It is a really isolated area to be in, right on the side of the motorway, it is about 10 miles(ish) away from Winchester. Until my parents and sister arrived the next day in the car, we were stuck in the service station and hotel and were getting quite bored with nothing to do.

The standard room rate is £56 per room per night. I guess that is quite normal, and the going rate for most Travelodges. We had a comfortable stay, the bathroom wasn't quite up to scratch but we didn't spend too much time in the hotel. For a standard hotel it was fine and the staff were friendly. It's ok for a night or two, but not for much longer! And take your car, I think that is essential if you don't want to be stuck at a boring service station with nothing to do.