Northriseretreat Reviews 2

Owner Darren & Stella are attentive and very welcoming, nothing is to much for him to sort out.The rooms are well thought out and comfortable all with big flat screen televisions,breakfast was very good, help yourself,good outlook from most rooms stayed there for two weeks in Feb 2025 lots to see with some good weather!

This is a 3 out of 5 for an hotel, which this is not.

I will explain.

This is a very good score. Also this is written by an over 65 whose wife is a year older and I been around as a news editor with millions of words written as investigated news stories. As for places to stay especially work - been there done that.

Northrise Retreat (NR) is more like a glorified spare room.co.uk or Air B&B, which the latter it also offers.

We should know this as having bought a former hotel, The Beacon (Mike Oldfield fame) and faced the last recession and tried a few things like holiday lets and spare room etc.

NR prices though are more than two thirds of the price of the absolute pick of the hotels in our neck of the woods. Here I mean some of the very best. This includes one near our local coast with beach front views, old Monterey Pine trees which you can sit under to sip drinks etc and look at sand dunes. You know what I mean - an hotel.

This place in Ore, East Sussex has little or no front of house, like you would find even at a Travelodge (which by the way their rooms can be awful) just a find-your-key-via-a-text.

So if you are a jobbing builder, on a contract, need some temporary accommodation NR would be spot on as the rooms, showers, heating, beds etc top notch. Everything else a proper hotel offers is simply not there. So not for older people wanting the real deal. I did shake hands briefly with Darren, a bit like ships passing in the night. That was my experience of front of house.

This lack of care was a real pain after a seven hour drive including the massive traffic jams at Hastings. We pressed the door bell and there was the buzzer and Darren pressing this good ole buzzer saying get the key and let ourselves in. By the way our actual room was changed twice before we arrived and then was a differnent one when we eventually got there, maybe a record who knows?

Also, there is no cuisine at all, just a do it yourself kitchen. First night we had to track down some fish and chips and guess what? there was absolutely no tomato sauce in the NR kitchen. On top of this there is the debacle over parking which definitely is parking next to the property actually tyres on the pavement sort of job - if you can find a space.

Now for the good things the room excellent, bed great and shower brilliant and heating top notch. Though washing hands in the bathroom, well, I think loads of others came before us. The liquid soap virtually empty, so very well used.