The Devonshire Fell Hotel

As soon as we arrived the service was excellent. Danni welcomed us and showed us to our rooms. I must give a special mention to Luke, upon hearing it was our anniversary he got the guys in the kitchen to do us a special anniversary dessert .....THANKYOU so much

What a find this was. Came highly recommended to us by friends who are regular patrons here and we were not disappointed during our three nights stay 'back home in Yorkshire' for our first visit here in 20 years. Incredibly well run with very friendly staff who go out of their way to make things special. Very comfortable and spacious room with magnificent fell views. The dining options and breakfasts are exceptional as is the location of course. This was a true delight run with high standards of yesteryear. Enjoyed all that the location offers including the complimentary car park pass for Bolton abbey. The barn owls display at dusk was a true wonder to watch sat in the verandah restaurant overlooking the countryside.

We stayed here for three nights in August in one of the large suites at the top. The location is absolutely fantastic and views from the room and restaurants are spectacular (look out for a rather ostentatious barn owl right outside in the early evening!). The staff at breakfast were efficient and friendly. The bath products were very good, and I appreciated the addition of moisturiser. Unfortunately, all the rest seemed to fall just short of the mark. The room was very large and spacious, but really needed a deep clean. The drawers had bits of rubbish in them, grubby door handles and tv remote, dust behind ornaments and tv, I don't think the extractor fans in the bathrooms had ever been cleaned and one of the first things I did was clean the mirror in the wardrobe because it had handprints smeared all over it. Not good enough for the premium price. The room had a bathroom and a shower room (yay), but the shower room smelled bad, we worked out why when we tried to have a shower the first night and the water didn't drain. We asked reception to fix the blocked drain and they said they would. It hadn't been fixed the following day so we asked again, and once again they said they would do so. It looked like housekeeping had had a go at it when we came up after breakfast the next day. When we got back that evening though, the girl at reception said they'd tried to fix it but it would require a plumber so we could use a different room to shower if we needed to. Obviously not necessary as we could shower in the bathroom, but it was annoying to have had to ask twice and to have the smell in the room. More annoyingly, the staff's response to the issue was indifference, they should have been embarrassed nd apologetic, but it seemed as if this sort of thing was standard. Again, not good enough for the premium price. The food. We had the a la carte menu in the dining room the first night. The food was ok, the service fine, there were no errors and nothing went wrong, but although they charged fine dining price, the only nod to fine dining was the fact that the portions were small. It did not seem as though enough care and attention had gone into the dishes and the quality of the ingredients did not stand out. Breakfast was ok; there was a good range of choice and the staff were kind and accommodating, but the full English wouldn't have been out of place in a Travel Lodge in quality. The bistro menu was again overpriced and pretentious, without the quality to back it up. Overall it would seem that this hotel aspires to a standard it doet not meet. The prices and descriptions promise far more than they deliver.