Saturday, 10 October 2020

In praise of Holiday Inn

We have occasion to visit Devon a couple of times a year and it so happens that Solstice Services, on the A303 near Stonehenge is just about half way. Solstice Services being a complex which we have known and used since most of it was rough grass. Indeed, when we first came across it, there was a splendid display of red poppies.

More recently we have discovered the ancillary benefits of the the Holiday Inn there. So on the way out we parked outside and took tea and biscuits in their quiet, comfortable and well organised lounge, very pleasantly served by a young lady from Manchester. And on the way back we took tea and sandwiches, served, as it happened, by the same young lady. A proper break rather than a quick picnic taken in car at some lay-by or on some side road. Or something at Fleet Services or somewhere of that sort.

We settled for tuna sandwiches on the grounds that they appeared to offer the least opportunity for pesto, drizzle, balsamic vinegar or anything else of that sort; anything else which we needed a break from after a few days on a pub grub diet. And complete with hand cooked potato crisps, whatever that might mean. In any event all very good and very good value too. Enough to keep me going, not so much as to make me drowsy for driving.

PS: I ought to add that we have stayed at this establishment at least once, probably more than a decade ago now. That worked too.

Reference 1: https://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/gb/en/reservation. Now a proud member of the IHG group. I think that when I was little, there was a founding Mr. Holiday Inn who kept a very tight grip on everything, to the point of insisting that each of his hotels was identical in every respect. A bit like McDonald's with their burgers. Tired customers like to be able to find their way around in the dark. An insistence which has since lapsed.

Reference 2: https://www.ihg.com/hotels/gb/en/reservation.

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