Caledonian Travel

We arrived at the hotel on Saturday 9th December in the evening along with another 3 coaches. we had to queue with our luggage on flights of stairs for possibly 45 minutes.

whilst checking in customers were returning to the desks to complain their heating was not on. there was a handyman near by who went off to sort this out. this made me think they were expecting problems with him being on hand.

we went to check in and were given the paperwork to point out our details to them. we got our key to the room, noted the sign saying no carry out food allowed and went to the restaurant.

At the restaurant there was a massive queue. there were no tables and chairs to sit at. We joined the queue and stood or one hour. The staff were having trouble understanding the orders. Two people were on the till, one person was making pizzas and the receptionists and the handyman were running out delivering the meals to the people lucky enough to have a seat and their meal ordered. People started to give up in the queue and leave without eating to go to their rooms. By the time we got to the front we had lost our appetite. The menu was terrible (fine if you like burgers and pizzas mind!).

The girl could not understand our order. I ended up paying for 2 drinks and taking them to our room where we ate cakes which we had purchased in London earlier that day. there were no seat for us to sit at. The two receptionists at the till were giggling and I had to ask them to take my payment for the drinks. they were very rude. i think the problem was there was not enough staff to deal with the amount of guests, there was certainly not enough table and chairs for customers to sit at and whilst I am not racist the fact that the staff were not english and could not understand the customers, slowed the process down even further.

I have travelled with caledonian travel in the past and stayed in lovely hotels without complaint but I would hate to every have to stay in this hotel again and it puts me off booking up again if i am honest. I would reconsider sending any of your customers to this hotel again in the future.

Can I just say our bus driver, Tim, was brilliant and he was so helpul and pleasant.

I await your reply.

This trip is so obviously a collaboration with the retail outlets in the locations. Instead of visiting Scotland we were driven to these outlets instead of the towns. We saw Gretna Green fleetingly (2secs) as we drove through on our way to a retail outlet. The walk back there and back would have taken 40 minutes. Loch Lomand, another retail center. Couldn't go to the Sea life centre as it wasn't specified on the itinerary that only pre bookings were accepted so back to the shops. Moffat, another retail outlet, had to walk into the town to see anything. If I'd wanted to go shopping for tatty trinkets or overpriced clothes I could have stayed home.

Plus the driver decided to take another route home which meant they dropped off in reverse order. Our lift that had been prearranged had to be cancelled and we then had to pay £28 for a taxi plus money for the cancelled lift.

The promise of scenery, country walks and quaint villages was so far from reality. If I had known the Adamton country house was ran by Brittania I never would have gone as their hotels are notoriously bad.

The hotel is like a borstal tacked onto a run down house/pretend mansion. The rooms weren't ready for some as they only had 3 cleaners, even the handyman had to help. Our hairdryer didn't work the cold water tap didn't work and the shower was a dribble.

The evening meal was inadequate, comparable to a school dinner, the meat ran out. The second evening there was a mediocre salad but no dressing of any kind, some sort of stew with chips? and cauliflower. No bread rolls but white sliced bread still in the packet in the bread basket then an unknown dry sponge cake without custard or cream. Spilled coffee left at the drink stations dripping everywhere and one very slow toaster (the other was broken) for 250 residents to use. The poor staff were overrun.

I understand that these trips are relatively cheap but stop advertising them incorrectly as they are just tours to retail outlets and poor quality accommodation.

I had a trip to Liverpool which by the time the bus broke down twice meant we literally had less than 12 hours there. The Adelphi is disgusting and had drug addicts and their dogs living there. Thought I'd give Caledonian travel the benefit of the doubt but these trips have put us completely off doing any more.

I have just returned from Torquay although the holiday was great, the driver was not, he was arrogant,rude he actually called a gentleman a dipstick when the gentleman was in early stages of dementia which is totally unacceptable,we couldn't believe what we were hearing, this happened on our way home at our drop of at darlington around 5.30-6.00 pm, this is the second time I have had this driver and he was the the same the first time although I go all over with caledonian, I will not be going back to torquay in case we get the same drivet