Clumber Park Lodges — Hotel in Bassetlaw

We went home two days earlier than intended due to the holiday being an environmental health risk to my family. We are in utter shock with the state of this lodge, the unprofessional behaviour of the manager, and the whole experience from start to finish.I emailed the receptionist ‘Sarah’ to arrange an early check in as I'd seen another bad review saying they had to wait two hours, Sarah arranged for us to check in at 2pm and to pay £20 on arrival. When we arrived, we had to wait as there had been no record made. We entered the lodge,I put my baby on the carpet so that she can crawl, she was instantly soaking wet, the carpets were absolutely drenched in water so she was unable to go on the floor for two days until it dried. The room my toddler was sleeping in, the door handle had fallen off and was being held together by two screws, the maintenance guy joked ‘it’s a good job it didn’t happen in the bathrooms, the window doesn’t open so you can’t climb out’. The welcome pack was a tea cloth, a sponge, a single bin bag, and a tiny sample hand soap, we had to go buy our own cleaning supplies like antibac spray, fairy liquid, cloths, toilet rolls, salt, pepper etc there were hardly any utensils, no cooking tongs, no chopping board, no measuring jugs, a few items of cutlery. We mentioned this to reception, they said they’ve also had other complaints about there being no basic items supplied. There’s no guest book saying how things work, what’s in the local area or where the local hospital is. We had no phone signal or Wi-Fi at the lodge. We hired a travel cot and no bedsheet was supplied, it was a plastic hard roll out mat with no padding, luckily I’d brought my own sheet. Our bed was like sleeping on rocks. I noticed black mould on the ceilings and kept my children away from touching the doors and windows. My children started coughing in the night and following morning and I decided to inspect the lodge further, there is black furry mould on the wooden rail by the front window, black mould on every single curtain, in the corner of the living room, a huge patch on ceilings in both bathrooms, it’s on the window and walls right next to where my toddler was sleeping, it was on the ceiling above my babys cot, the master bedroom was covered in black mould! I was absolutely horrified! Whilst doing the inspection, I found a pair of stained dirty women’s knickers on the radiator. I was so upset that Id booked this holiday which had put my childrens health at risk. We complained to reception and showed her the photos she agreed it was disgusting and asked if we will move to the lodge which was next to a group of girls that screamed in the hot tub until early hours in the morning so we said no. She then said she will speak to the manager. We heard nothing. We went back to reception and the manager was extremely rude and unprofessional to my husband she basically agreed it was disgusting but did not care as long as she gets a level of occupancy, she offered 25% off a holiday next year, obviously we refused. All weekend a really loud noisy group of girls screaming until after midnight which kept waking my baby and toddler all night. On Monday another group of girls were screaming and shouting in the hot tub by us until 1.00am.We mentioned this to the manager, she said why didn’t we ring and report it, we had no phone signal to report it, but shouldn’t the security guard be doing this? And where was the security at the weekend when it was so rowdy that my children couldn’t sleep, we reported it to reception the following day but nothing was done, they just said they had already been made aware from other guests complaining. Cleaning staff throw pillows, bed sheets and duvets on wet grass after each lodge they clean. I have seen dogs wee in the same area, including my own dog. Its disgusting! Avoid this place at all costs. It’s a glorified dirty static caravan which is only interested in a high turn over of guests and mainly aimed at loud chavs getting drunk in hot tubs. It's definitely NOT for families who want to have a...

I have recently had a four night family break at this lodge (Lime Spa) with two family members. Depending on why you are booking a lodge break, this may or may not be suited to your personal needs/requirements. For the £199 I paid (which was a bargain,) my needs were basic which were to have a private hot tub, cleanliness and nice views, however the most important thing which I had not prepared for was the health and safety being compromised of my family members and this would definitely influence whether I would book with them again in the future.

In terms of things which get included in your break, the facilities are very basic in comparison to other lodges across the UK.

You get 3 x dishwashing pods, 1 x mini tube of washing up liquid, 1 x dish cloth, cutlery, various utensils, kettle, cooker, fridge/freezer provided. 2 x towels and 2 x toilet rolls are also included. There are no laundering facilities on site anywhere and if you need to use an iron, hairdryer or run out of tissue rolls you would need to get them yourself or pay extra on site.

As you can see from the images, the outdoor area could have been better cleaned in preparation for guests to visit. It was not a beautiful sight on entry to the lodge. The condition on the inside of the kettle provided was unacceptable and should be replaced. We did not use this on our break, opting for boiling our water instead as I have immunocompromised family members and did not want to risk them falling ill on their break. The taps were peeling apart and need a touch up or replacement. As a carer, I always check out all facilities before I let any of my family use them and I noticed that the step leading up to the private tub was very unstable. No matter where we moved/adjusted it, it was dangerous as; either side of the steps hang over the concrete path and don't comfortably sit still in one place. In the end, my mother avoided using it altogether which was a shame, but I personally loved the hot tub experience. It was my favourite part of the stay. The internet signal as well as WIFI/phone signal were non-existent most of our stay which meant we couldn't connect our own devices to the TV to watch anything else (we were located near the reception area where the signal should have been good.) We had many moments of no signal bars at all which was quite worrying considering reception and their out of hours phone wouldn't always connect. Two moments stuck out for me specifically. Our heating would not work in some of the rooms at the lodge, this was dangerous for us as we had an elderly family member who had health issues where heating was necessary for them, so I called the in office number and the person answering told me that they could not get hold of reception and to try them later or go see them in person. I felt this to be totally unacceptable. Ideally they should have continued to try contacting reception themselves and passed it on as a matter of urgency to come and see us or they should have a direct method of contact via landline which can get straight through to a phone that is based in reception and is manned 24/7. In the end I managed to get it working myself but it could have been handled a lot better. Another instance where I felt health and safety was compromised is on the day of checkout when we accidentally triggered the smoke detectors due to burnt toast, I assumed on activation that someone would be alerted at reception automatically and come and see us or check to see if everything was okay but instead we were stuck with no phone signal, not able to call 999 even if we wanted to as (being on EE which is regarded as one of the best networks in the UK didn't get any signal.) I was getting no bars so unable to make calls (I tried via WIFI and without WIFI and nothing worked.) Luckily it was a false alarm so I tried calling the out of hours number to let them know it was a false alarm but it wouldn't connect after multiple attempts. Despite this... I enjoyed the views and peacefulness, but unsure if I...

Really disappointing visit here that saw us leaving after 2 nights instead of 3.

But let’s start with the positives. The location is lovely. The unit we were in was spotlessly clean.

BUT there are some issues that I think would be a deal breaker for families with young children.

We paid the fee to hire a travel cot when we booked. And our booking clearly stated we would have a baby with us. The travel cot was left in the “lodge” (more on that after) as promised. But the kicker? Nowhere to put it. The bedrooms were so so tiny (and the furniture fitted so couldn’t be moved) that literally the only place we could put the travel cot was in the en suite and had to jam a cushion between the toilet bowl and the cot to stop our baby hitting his head on the toilet bowl. It, of course, didn’t work and unsurprisingly my son wouldn’t settle there. So I had to put him in the bed and just go lie with him from when he went to sleep.

There really should be some sort of warning to people who are travelling with babies that there’s no space for any sort of travel cot in bedrooms. So I got to pay for a travel cot I won’t be able to use.

I did send a message about this and was told:

“Also on the web site and through Hoseasons it does state that travel cots only fit in the living areas”

I sent customer services back screenshots of their own website page for our accommodation type and that of Hoseasons too. The only reference to cots was the cost of hire. The only reference to babies is that they must be included in the party total. Nowhere on the page for that accommodation does it specify travel cots won’t fit in the bedrooms.

It turns out that the reference they are talking about is a tiny sentence you get in an email AFTER booking, right at the end of a long email. So you don’t find out about the travel cot situation until after you’ve made your non refundable booking, which is highly misleading.

The “lodges” really should be described as static caravans. They’re exactly the same as small static caravans (the Lime one that we stayed in at least) but brown on the outside. That’s literally it.

Curtains are too thin to and too short to keep the light out so unless you bring your own black out blind you can expect it to be light by 4am in your bedroom in summer too.

The beds in the twin bedroom were absolutely awful to sleep in. Absolutely tiny, very uncomfortable mattresses.

We also found that the attitude of customer service was a tad hit and miss. We found we couldn’t connect to the guest wifi in our lodge. So one of our party went to reception to query it and was asked, “which lodge are you in?” When she told them, she was told “Well you don’t get it there.” And that was it.

I went myself later to query whether there was anything we could do to improve signal and explained that I work remotely sometimes and had a few things to do over the weekend. I was told I would just need to stand in reception if I wanted to use the wifi and then that “people come here to chill out, not work.” I just found that a touch dismissive and, frankly, naïve to think that people don’t sometimes need to work while they’re away. I imagine there’ll be more of that to come as employers adopt a more flexible approach.

Further to that, we’d checked before going and were told we’d be able to access wifi in the Woodshed café. So actually I could have gone and got a coffee and caught up on the highest priority things I had to do there. Still right now on the Hoseasons listing it says you can do that “from 21st June.” Our break started on 25th and the Woodshed was closed the entire time apparently due to staffing issues. So the only suggestion reception had was that I could stand outside Woodshed with my laptop. Not so practical…

So, in short, it’s in a great place and Clumber Park National Trust site is amazing. But if you have young children, this probably isn’t the place...