The Joiners Arms

I was worried about staying at Castle View cottage after bad reviews here. I can see a trace of why the reviews might have been bad but our stay was fantastic. I decided to give 5 stars in spite of, rather than 4 stars because of some minor issues. Overall, I would highly recommend a stay at Castle view cottage, especially if travelling, as were, with friends, or for a family. The decor was lovely and the team had gone the extra mile to make it welcoming, with plenty of provisions and lights and heating on. The bed was very comfy, as was the sitting room and it was great to have plenty of your own space, as you would not have in a hotel room. It was lovely to have a grassy garden out the back which would be nice to sit in in summer. Everything was spotlessly clean. The breakfast was delicious at the Joiner's Arms, which had nice decor / atmosphere and very friendly and helpful staff. We particularly appreciated the chance to book a cottage for one night only, which was on our cycle through up the coast. It was nice to have privacy and the cottage (yes, it is a bungalow but its name is 'cottage' and it is very sweet inside) was in a quiet spot I did not spot the castle but perhaps you can see one form the garden. All well-equipped. I will add the niggles so the hotel staff know and hopefully will respond. The main one is, outside at the back, there is a dripping water leak out of a pipe below the kitchen window. This is wasteful. Others were that the chest of drawers on our room was lacking a handle. The kitchen bin had a faulty foot pedal. It just be borne in mind that with a large property like this it means more room for niggles than you would get in a hotel room. It might help if the Joiners Arms could put more photos on the website so people can make a more informed choice. It was not pretty from the outside but it was lovely inside an very convenient.

Stayed in Castle View for a wedding at Newton Hall. Cottage was lovely, clean and spacious. Bed’s are comfy. The breakfast at Joiners Arms the next morning was amazing! Staff really polite. Can’t fault the stay at all. Would happily visit again.

I booked the Joiners Arms under the promise of 5* food and accomodation and felt missold. It was a very disappointing stay. We stayed as a family of 3 adults and two children in Castle View Cottage. The cottage is poorly decorated and presented. It feels like an old home that has been repurposed on a shoestring with income generation and not the customer in mind. The decor is rundown, it smelt stale and whilst (mainly) surface clean , its shabbiness in no way made me feel comfortable. The wheelie bins are outside the bedroom window and the place feels a bit eerie. The pub itself was warm and welcoming in appearance and the staff for the most part were polite and helpful. The service however was slow as there weren't enough experienced staff working and as the pressure rose naturally the service reduced even further . Our evening meal was ok for most of us but not great. Breakfast was also disappointing: coffee machine serving poor coffee, dirty coffee cups stacked by the machine, dry pastries and cooked breakfast that was also just ok. The cottage should be offered for what it is, a basic level accomodation at a matching price. Neither cottage or pub are high level but when it is sold as such you hope for more. The management need to accept the level of service they are providing is not 5* and either stop selling it as such or make significant changes. I have fed this back to the company before posting.

Disappointing to be honest. Food just average at best, for a “gastro pub”, service the same. Toilets filthy, lots of flies, as in the bar. Tables not clean as pine slat effect and without a hoover you will not get detritus out. An expensive mistake. Will not return.

Very disappointed with this hotel and very rude staff. We went for pre-wedding drinks and food with family and after waiting over twenty minutes to be served at the bar we gave up. They seemed extremely short-staffed but that was made worse by their rudeness. Completely ignored at the bar without so much as an apology for the delay. We needed an extra seat in the dining area but were told we couldn't borrow one from another empty table even though there were lots of empty tables at the time we visited. Eventually the waitress came to take our order but we were really put off by then and decided to cancel. Breakfast the next day was also hit and miss. We both had to ask for butter and plates as there was none at the self-service buffet area. Would not recommend.

My husband and I stayed here in "The Aln" for 2 nights in May. It was supposed to be 3 nights, but we were so disgusted with the state of the room that we checked out early and came home. The room is tiny, with sloping ceilings as it is in the eaves of the "Joiner's Den" next door to the main pub. My husband, who is 6' 1"tall, could only stand upright in the centre of the room, (which was of course occupied by the bed), or in the bathroom. The room was claustrophobically small, very dark with little natural light and extremely tired, dusty and grubby. There was dust on all the surfaces, the lights did not work properly and kept dimming themselves which was rather disconcerting. As there was only one small window and a tiny skylight , it would have been preferable if the room had been decorated in light colours, instead it was brown wood panelling or black emulsion in the area round the bath. In fact it was so dark in there that it was only on the second day that we noticed the badly chipped enamel bath had two inches of water in the bottom, obviously left by a previous occupant. This confirmed our overall impression of grubbiness, because if the room had been thoroughly cleaned whoever did it would have noticed the drainage problem with the bath. As a result, it had become unusable and a pointless waste of space. The single cupboard in the room was painted black inside, so again it was very difficult to see what was in there. In fact there was a general shortage of anywhere to hang clothes or put your things. There were some good points, the Wifi worked well, the bathroom,although tired and shabby had a lovely powerful, walk-in shower. Breakfasts were good, with none of the chaos other guests seem to have noted, but that may have been because we came down early, desperate to get out of the cramped room! We had dinner in the pub one night and the food was fine, but the service was chaotic and very poor. The young staff, who were friendly and cheerful, seemed to think you were invisible after they served the main course and kept wandering past avoiding eye contract which made getting coffee and the bill very tedious - good luck if you want to order pudding ! One other point to be aware of is that there is no on-site parking and hotel guests have to use the public car park about 200 yards up the road. In spite of making our concerns known to staff during our stay, we have had no contact so far from the hotel. All in all, I cannot recommend the Joiner's Arms as somewhere to stay.