Jolly Sailor at Orford — Restaurant in East Suffolk

This poor score relates to the Jolly Sailor's BnB service and facilities not the restaurant or bar. Main issues: 1. Room booked direct turned out to not exist. Requested a room, which we thought we had secured- "ground floor with only a view of the rear garden" and not overlooking the road, but all the rooms do and was woken up at 06.45 by bin truck. Answer from Management " we seemed to have got our wires crossed !!" On-duty manager tried to convince us Body Lotion could be used as bath/shower gel when we asked for some!! None provided; had to use hand wash!! Management Answer : "He gave you some shampoo" Knew rooms only had a bath, but on advising our age on booking, we should have been cautioned that it is a deep rolltop bath. My wife struggled to get out of it. Answer: " There is no room for a shower because of the age of the building and eve's" Continental Breakfast: worst ever experienced. See Photo. Mouldy and stale Muesli - removed from photo, small cereal bowl with minute quantities of mixed berries, orange juice and bread and jam. We were told it was a spread and you may not want a cooked breakfast!! Answer: "we are a small hotel and not able to offer a wider selection and anyway most people prefer a cooked breakfast." Payment: asked up front on arrival and after evening meal. Told why; "just in case we forget in the morning in the rush". Didn't make us feel particularly trusted. Answer: "That's our accounting system"

We emailed the management twice with these main complaints ( there were others) to give them the opportunity to offer feasible and acceptable reasons. Unfortunately, they didn't, hence this poor score and review. Positives: Big comfortable bed, lovely linen, spacious...

It's difficult to find anything positive to say about The Sailor! Had a very enjoyable visit last year. No complaints. This year? What a change..... we are a party of eight. All of an age staying over and dining (dinner and breakfast). Not the cheapest of deals but, you get what you pay for. WRONG! Room not only wasn't cleaned, it was dirty. Previous occupants had left the remanants of fly swatting on the walls, flies were a nusiance. Bathroom wasn't clean, however, towels and bedding were fresh. The constant firing up of the air conditioning unit to somewhere other than our room was a disturbance throughout the night, luckily we were late retiring, due mainly to the fact that dinner was late. The first course was missing entirely. We didn't get the offer of dessert. The staff surly as well as forgetful. We were charged for the most expensive wines when we had requested the house wines and the "optional" service charge on the bill for a total lack of service added insult to injury. We didn't pay the service charge and adjustments were made for the non delivery of food. We weren't looking for a discounted evening and, did spend a substantial sum on accomadation, dinner, breakfast and copious amounts of alcohol during our stay. The site is unkempt, tables not wiped down, trays sticky and dirty, probably due to the lack of staff and with only the one exception untrained. Matt, the manager (front of house) was polite and welcoming. He's wasted here! I could go on......... It is the closest hostelry to the quay.........walk the extra yardage, use one of the other pubs and avoid the not so...

Where to begin? The good stuff! We stayed for 5 nights, the room was great, nicely appointed, clean and warm. The pub itself is a lovely, interesting, building, I have been coming here since the late 90's and it is a real treat. The staff were, by and large, really good (note by and large, more on this later). Breakfast was good, the kippers especially so. The not so good stuff... The food is fine, pricey, but all right. The menu did not change, understandable, but it became a struggle after the third night. Daily specials were the same every day... On top of this we were asked to pay a discretionary 10% service charge even though we had paid just shy of £700 to stay there... Drinks are very expensive, £5.70 for a Broadside! Really? In an Adnams pub! My lovely local knocks it out at £4.50... So a pint and a Bloody Mary was just shy of £20. £13 in my local. As I said staff were really good, engaged and great. One member of staff was not so. I had a parcel delivered, the barman insisted that it had not been. The barmaid was lovely and checked next door incase it had been miss-delivered. It had not. The following evening the same barman was seen waving an Amazon parcel at another staff member saying "Oh, early Christmas present!" The following morning the chap supervising breakfast told us that we had a parcel and bought it out for us, saying that he had seen it a couple of days ago and wondered why it had not been given to us... So dear Jolly Sailor. There's going to be no return from us for the foreseeable, pity as fundamentally...