Our first stay in a Delta Hotel : Cheltenham Chase

When Sue suddenly decided we needed to go away for the weekend (Valentine’s Weekend 2023) I decided to totally leave her to deciding both the destination and the hotel.

Surprisingly she came up with a overnight stay just outside Cheltenham, in a Delta Hotel by Marriott. We spent the Saturday in Gloucester, and then the Sunday in Cheltenham and I have to say, they are both nice destinations that we will definitely go back to in the future.

Now I know the Marriott brand but I hadn’t heard of the Delta chain of hotels, so didn’t really know what we were going to find when we arrived, but I have to say we certainly weren’t disappointed.

I had booked an accessible room for Sue, and had been contacted immediately by the hotel reception via Booking.com to let us know that everything had been arranged for our arrival.

The hotel from the outside is unassuming, but inside we were pleasantly surprised by the modern and stylish surroundings, and the general high quality of the public spaces.


Check-in was completed by a very pleasant receptionist, Ariel, and while a lot of hotel staff have the expected professional demeanour, and go through the whole scripted welcome finishing with “have a nice stay”, there was just something about Ariel that went beyond this – a genuinely lovely person who really did go that extra mile to make us feel welcome.

She also joined us up to the Marriott reward schem , and I have a sneaky suspicion that we will be using more often now we’ve had a taste of their hotels.

The hotel inside featured clean, modern styling and was very well kept throughout, with nice public spaces and a resepctably sized restaurant serving nice quality food. We used the bar and restaurant during our stay, and we have nothing but praise for the venues and the nice staff who work in them.

We had been given an accessible room as requested and this was for once a PROPER accessible room – high level toilet, roll in shower, rails everywhere without looking clinical. There were hearing links for the hard of hearing, wardrobes with pull down rails to suit a wheelchair user, and a host of other subtle but essential features.

The room was a good sized king double and there seemed heaps of space in the room. The bed was exceptioonally comfortable ( we couldn’t find the brand label) and also had a nice tick topper on the top of the mattress. Throw in a nice sized TV and free wifi, tea tray with biscuits, room service and complimentary bathroom products and we would say this was exceptionally good value.

We almost found this hotel by accident and chose it for its nice central location between the two towns. We also found Cheltenham and Gloucester two excellent places to visit, so I guess we will be back at this Delta real soon!

Thanks to all the staff and we hope to see you soon.

Rob and Sue

Manchester Airport Runway Visitor Park

When we finally booked for our family holiday to Florida, it occured to me that Poppy and Freya had never been near a plane, never mind flow across the ocean for 10 hours.

So I hatched this idea to take them to an airport and let them have a look around and get a taste of what goes off there and see some real planes in all their glory.

Looking around, there aren’t many airports these days that encourage spectators, or even have facilities for them, and as we were flying from Manchester I thought I would check them out too.   I’m glad I did, because what I found exactly fit the bill.

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Gibraltar Weekend May 2022

Well, I’m doing things in reverse this time around – I normal write our review and then make a video, and for our recent trip to Gibraltar I’ve started on the video.

So here it is, part 1 – I will explain the distinct absence of monkeys later!

It’s a “No'” for 5229 Oakbourne Avenue, Solterra.

Welcome to our review of “Dean’s Villa”, 5229 Oakbourne Avenue, Solterra Resort, Davenport Florida.

I’m going to start by saying we had a problem with the booking – a quite major one. And it would be easy for you to assume therefore that our opinion of the villa was somewhat skewed and malicious as a consequence. Hopefully by the end of this post you will see it as a fair and balanced review which will give you some information to mull over when considering this property. It’s quite a story but it’s relevant and I hope you’ll persevere and read through until the end.

Continue reading “It’s a “No’” for 5229 Oakbourne Avenue, Solterra.”

Review : Icelandair : March 2022

We’ve been planning our flight to Orlando for over two years, and after a long search through all the available options, we opted for Icelandair. And now we’ve finally taken the flights after two years of waiting, we can tell you what we thought…

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Irish Tour Day 7

Friday morning; our time in Ireland is nearly at an end, and I must say we have thoroughly enjoyed our short tour around the country.   It has left us eager to come back and sample more of the wonderful and diverse sights and sounds on offer.

For our last day, we will visit Galway, before heading back to Dublin, with an overnight stop in Athlone.
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Irish Tour Day 6

We are nearing the end of our week in Ireland.  We’ve seen cities, towns, village, countryside, seaside, fields, mountains.    And although it’s been fairly relaxed, when I planned the tour back in December 2018, I thought it would be prudent to take a break from the driving.   So, no destination tonight, we’re stopping two nights on the shores of Lough Corrib, and touring the west side of the country.
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