The Cow Dalbury

What a delight!! We stayed at The Cow as a group of friends, gorgeous boutique hotel with lush bedroom decor and crisp fresh bed linen and the most comfy bed and pillows. Discovering a golden triangle of 3 pubs The Cow where we stayed and had the best breakfast, a delightful walk around the area before lunch in The Bluebell (what a pizza!), back for a refresh and onwards to a fine dining evening the Horseshoes… all within a couple of miles of each other. Lovely walks and stately homes and gardens to visit. And these 3 gems of gastro and lush flavour made for a delightful couple of days. Great staff and service throughout. Highly recommend.

Stayed here the night of our wedding and the night before. Overall wouldn’t recommend staying here. The rooms themselves were lovely and perfectly equipped for a wedding, but some of the behaviour of the staff was odd to say the least and I didn’t think the service matched the price we had paid. There were a couple of noteworthy incidents which I set out below, but generally everyone commented that the staff seems a little bit off/grumpy. We had booked all but one room at the inn. They were clearly very stressed about the breakfast situation and asked each person as they arrived what time they would be having their breakfast (even after being told that the bride had made a plan for breakfast and would let them know when she arrived - they had already called earlier in the week asking that we stagger our breakfasts). They could only seat 4 at a time - not a huge deal but being from a medium sized family, 4 seemed a bit weak and overall it would have been nice to have been able to sit together. We were happy to stagger the breakfasts in groups of 4 and when they arrived they were good quality. We had booked an extra room on the first night with guests joining us the following day. We had pre agreed with the hotel that a groomsman who was getting ready with us the following day could have the breakfast attached to the room. However, later that morning (on our wedding day), they demanded payment and would not let us use the iron (again, on our wedding day), until they received payment for the breakfast. Ultimately we did not have to pay for the breakfast, but still strange behaviour, particularly given the amount it had costs to stay there for 2 nights.

Fantastic pub with rooms and amazing food. Our room was closest to the bar which worried us a little on arrival but somehow (maybe the heavyweight door!) we weren’t disturbed by noise at all really which was a great relief. The room was spacious with a little outside space which was nice and quality fixtures and fittings - we were pleasantly surprised when it was cleaned after our first night (we stayed for two nights). The bar/restaurant has a lovely cosy, traditional feel. Service was good but a few times we were left standing at the bar twiddling our thumbs - much better to tell customers you’ll be with them shortly rather than leave them standing there while you’re finishing what you’re doing. The food was delicious - loved the warm bread and butter too. The only slight disappointment was the cheese board which was a bit flavourless and the crackers weren’t great and weren’t to our taste. Our waitress forgot our table water twice and eventually brought it out after our mains - I admire staff that don’t write anything down but when things get forgotten it can be annoying. There was a pretty severe storm while we were there and the the pub suffered some water ingress but the staff weren’t phased by it at all and were very professional in carrying on as though nothing has happened when some of the lights went out. My husband was bitterly disappointed with the lack of ale on offer - being as it’s so popular at the moment it was disappointing that they didn’t have more on offer. All in all a lovely stay and with a few improvements would be 5 stars.

Lovely little place hidden away from the hustle and bustle. We planned on taking a walk but in the end we didn't leave the hotel. Great food. Good wine list. Beautiful room and Molton Brown toiletries always impress me. I'm pretty sure we will be back.