The Cross Keys Hotel

Pleasant
Traveller Type: review category business travellers
  : It was clean, had parking and tea and coffee facilities in the rooms. Staff were welcoming and friendly with the location being excellent. The price included breakfast in the cafe over the road, which was nice.
  : The property is tired.

Very Good
Traveller Type: solo traveller

Pleasant
Traveller Type: young couple
  : Noise from the road

Very Good
Traveller Type: with friends
  : Warm welcome. Location perfect for us (walking The Shropshire Way).
  : Only negative was the bathroom! It needs a total overhaul. However we realise that work has started on the kitchen and, as it is a listed building, all these things take time. But please, in the first instance, fix the toilet seat!

Wonderful
Traveller Type: solo traveller
  : The carbo-heavy Continental breakfast was really not my kind of food. However, I brought the croissant home for my wife! In every other way the Cross Keys was a delight. The room was both comfortable and beautiful. The shower room was great. As for Llanymynech, I can report that it has one of the best fish and chip shops that I have ever known. The little village offers at least three other places to eat or take away, and has a lovely relaxed atmosphere despite the fairly heavy traffic on the A483. I should mention the nice bar of the Cross Keys, where I drank a much-needed pint.⁰
  : Well, I am not a fan of Continental breakfasts, but that is just me. I understand why the Cross Keys cannot offer cooked food at the moment, during kitchen refurbishment. Everything else was great. Many thanks to the friendly staff!

Very Poor
Traveller Type: solo traveller
  : Nothing at all. When I arrived, a gentleman behind the bar explained that the kitchen was being 're-vamped' so that neither an evening meal nor breakfast could be provided, despite what the website claimed. However, for the evening meal, I could walk a few yards down the road to a nearby pub, where I would find 'really good home-cooking' and that breakfast was available at the cafe opposite - across a busy main road - with whom the pub had made an arrangement. So I walked the local pub for a meal but they weren't serving food as 'the staff was on holiday'. This is surely something that The Cross Keys' management should have taken the trouble to find out, especially when their website said one thing and reality another. I did find food eventually: average. In the morning, I walked across to the cafe and announced I was from the pub. They gave me a laminated menu, which I thought was odd. I asked how long they'd had this arrangement. 'Oh,' they said, 'for ages. They haven't done food for years.' Which made the statement that food service was suspended because 'the kitchen was being revamped' untrue. And there's a word we have for deliberately untrue statements. As for the breakfast, you paid extra for cappuccino if you wanted more than weak instant and a splash of milk. And breakfast was a bacon bap. I had considered a full English when I saw one go out: hash browns, bacon, beans I think, all the trimmings, a real plateful. 'Is that the full English?' I asked. 'Not for the hotel,' they said. One of the choices on my menu was beans on toast.
  : I didn't at all like being told something that wasn't true when I arrived. But most of all I didn't like the fact that my room was filthy. I sat down in the small, plastic-upholstered armchair and found that my hands were both sticky from something on the arms. The window was propped open. The window sill was filthy, as were the frames and the glass. There were stains on the carpet, wifi but nothing resembling a table. In the bathroom, the shower cubicle had mould and rust along all the non-glass surfaces. The heated shower facility was low-volume and only just warm enough to shower under, and it took time to reach that temperature. I had thought it rather odd that, the moment I arrived, I was asked to pay for the room without first seeing it but I can now understand why. Before I left the following morning, I half-cleaned a stretch of window sill with a towel. It was dark grey with the dirt and I left it, dirt showing, on the floor under the window.

Poor
Traveller Type: review category business travellers
  : The barmaid was pleasant.
  : It smelt terrible, which I could smell even in the hotel part of the building.

Fair
Traveller Type: review category business travellers
  : Booked day before as needed somewhere to sleep the night before a meeting. For the price paid and the description it was to be expected that the facilities are what they are. However, Jason the host/manager/owner could not be faulted, I travel with work having stayed in many places all over UK and Europe in usually more rated establishments, but Jason's greeting was the best to be had, ever. He went out his way to make sure everything was OK. great value for money and a great host.

Good
Traveller Type: review category business travellers

Fair
Traveller Type: young couple