The Gladstone,where the pub staff greet you with a smile, and the bathroom in room 3 greets you with a slap in the face from the bowels of Hades.
Check-in? Lovely. Quick, polite, and informativeâwe were shown to Room 3 and directed to the tea-and-coffee zone. But once we opened the door, we discovered the room had a very special ambiance: Eau de Decomposition.
Windows were already open, as if room had just hosted a séance gone wrong. The smell? Picture a stew of stale water and sewer smells. We flagged it to the bar, were promised a visit from someone, but nothing changed except the windows got mysteriously re-opened while we were out. Maybe ghosts, maybe denial.
Undeterred, I MacGyvered the smell myselfâwith toilet paper. Turns out there were visible gaps behind toilet where the pipe disappears into the wall, and they were sucking in air from⊠somewhere evil. A few carefully jammed wads of tissue later, the stink subsided. And just when I thought I could retire from hotel engineeringâŠ
Boom. I open the bathroom door and the bathtub side panel drops off like it was auditioning for a dramatic role in Property Brothers: Haunted Edition. Apparently, the gaps I sealed was what kept the bath panel clinging to life. Once again, I stepped upâre-attached it, secured it with wet toilet paper, and gently whispered to it, âYouâre doing amazing, sweetie.â
The towel rail in the bathroom? Oh, it's there. Technically. Holding itself to the wall using nothing but mild friction, prayer, and a shared dream of stability. One careless towel tug and itâs coming with you.
The bed is a standard double. Watching TV from it requires you to crane your neck like youâre in the front row of a cinema showing Titanic on the ceiling. The TV is an old-school 32-inch Toshiba LCD mounted 2 meters highâretro enough to qualify for a museum loan. Its remote has no battery cover, and the buttons are so faded I was basically decoding ancient runes to find the volume.
The shower experience deserves its own review. The bath features a glass swing panel thatâplot twistâopens both ways. Naturally, you'd try to open it outward to step in, which promptly smacks into the sink like it's trying to start a bar fight. Next time, Iâll be opening it inward, like a sneaky ninja entering a stealth mission.
The showerhead is straight off Temu or AliExpressâone of those clear plastic ones filled with mystery beads that promise something, but deliver mostly water and existential doubt. The spray settings donât work anymore, so it's permanently stuck in ârandom high power jetâ.
Bonus Twist:
Turns out my girlfriend loved the shower. Specifically, the high-pressure on the budget spa-bead showerhead. She may have enjoyed it a bit too muchâif you catch my drift. At this point, I'm not sure if I'm rating the hotel or losing her to a ÂŁ6 shower attachment. Either way, 1 star... for emotional damage.
Water pressure is surprisingly good, but adjusting the temperature? That's an art form. The difference between glacial and volcanic is about a 2mm nudge of the cold tap. One wrong twitch and you're reenacting a scene from Danteâs Inferno or Frozen, depending on which way you slip.
Final verdict:
The Gladstone isnât so much a hotel as it is an escape room with beer. You donât stay hereâyou survive here, armed with toilet paper, guesswork, and a sturdy sense of humour.
Room 3 in particular should come with a warning and a toolkit. Itâs the kind of place that builds character.
You book expecting boutique charm and walk away with a crash course in plumbing, appliance archaeology, and how to emotionally compete with a high-pressure showerhead.
Would I stay here again? Honestly⊠maybe. But only if the other rooms come with windows you can see out of, towel rails that believe in themselves, and plumbing that doesnât require a sĂ©ance.
Until then, Room 3 will live onânot as a luxury stayâbut as a character-building tale Iâll be telling at dinner...
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