AN INSPECTOR CALLS
His mission: To test hotel hospitality to the limit
trees on the northern bank, never mind that Heathrow’s Terminal 5 is a hop and a skip away.
Conference hotels such as this are like the bigger kind of cruise ships. What they lack in intimacy they make up for in (dread word) facilities. For families, you have Thorpe Park and Legoland nearby; for grown-ups there’s Frogmore House and Savill Gardens in Windsor Great Park, the former so loved by Queen Victoria that she built a mausoleum for her and Prince Albert in the grounds.
‘Is this what a hotel in Dubai is like?’ asks my wife.
Not at all, I tell her — although the display of plastic ducks near reception is worrying. They are all on sale. Some portray barristers, others Beefeaters and women with feather boas.
Runneymede-on-Thames is fun — and the buffet breakfast is as humungous as anything they can muster in Dubai.
The Runnymede-on-Thames, Windsor Road, Egham, Surrey TW20 0AG Tel: 01784 220 960, runnymedehotel.com
Doubles from £169 b&b