Hotels Near The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle

Having visited the inn a couple of times in the summer, when I received good service and great food, I suggested the Red Well as a place to meet some friends for a pre Christmas meal. Drinks order came quickly without any issues and we ordered our food. The waitress then returned to inform me that the only veggie option on theChristmas menu (other than a salad..) was not available so I had to order from the main menu. Starters came and went without any issues though the creamy garlic mushrooms, whilst edible, were disappointing as they had no garlic flavour and the sauce was made with cream cheese which is a cheap, corner cutting approach to creamy sauce. No big deal though. Then the mains came.. the Christmas dinner was a massive mound of frozen carrots and “quite poor” in the words of my friends eating it. My “curried roasted veg covered in mash potatoes had no curry flavour, no roasted veg and most importantly no sauce. It was a bowl of rock hard flavourless chickpeas with a little spinach added but nothing else, dry as a bone and simply not edible. Waitress offered to bring manageress over and she agree to remove it from my bill but nothing was offered as an alternative to me. So I had to go without the main part of my main meal. The other 2 meals looked nice but were cold. My friends didn’t bother to request they were warmed up as they’d seem the limited response I had received when making my comments about the food. We asked for the music to be turned down slightly as speaker was above us and waitress went off, and music stayed loud. When she eventually returned we asked again and the waitress told us “we can’t turn it down as those people at the other side of the restaurant have asked us to turn it up”, then walked away…When they finally returned to clear the table we were not asked if we wanted anything else so we kept chatting. When they returned later again and we were asked if they could get us anything else we said yes could we have 2 mins to look at dessert menu, only to be told 2 minutes later that the kitchen had stopped serving nearly an hour ago so we couldn’t have desserts. I suggested to the waitress that perhaps they should have told us sooner (especially as I’d basically missed my main course) and she shrugged and walked away… so we asked for the bill which came with 4 chocolates. However, there were 5 of us so they couldn’t even get that right! We commented and the manageress said she’d bring more but didn’t. Then as we left and one of my party said she was still waiting for her chocolate, the manageress got stroppy and slammed the chocolate into my friends hand. It is rare to receive such consistently bad service, and to be served pretty poor food too. Massive shame for this business as the 5 of us are all local and could have returned with other groups but none of us will set foot in there again whilst under the same management. There are too many good places to go to waste your time and money in a place as poor as this.

We have had a wonderful stay we have been before and will go again,wonderful food wonderful rooms and wonderful stuff.We met up with friends and to a wonderful welcome the food is excellent and I had a pudding and that was out of this world xx

Good location. Nice and quiet. Riverside and picturesque. Didn’t use any facilities or have breakfast so unable to comment. We came on motorcycles and it was nice for them to let us park them in the courtyard. Thank you. Room had a double bed plus 2 more singles! Shower design needs to be improved though as all the floor gets wet.

We chose this hotel for an overnight stop when visiting the area. Good location and good facilities. There was was ample parking on the Saturday that we stayed, but you have to make sure you register your car at reception. This is free and there’s plenty of reminders. Reception staff were friendly and efficient. We tried the restaurant which had an Italian menu, the food was very nice. The room was a reasonable size and quiet overnight. The one negative point would be the tv system was very basic, most hotels have access to online streaming services and our room just had a basic tv access. We weren’t able to try the gym as it didn’t open until 8:00 on a Sunday.