Demeures & Châteaux la Belle Meuniere

Best though of as a restaurant with rooms. From the description e.g. an historic mansion with views of the park, I had thought this was in the countryside, but it turns out that Royat is a suburb of Clermont and this hotel is right on a main road with a public car park next to it. There is indeed a public park at the back with a river running through it, but the surroundings are very much urban. There doesn't seem to be a lift and our room was one floor down from reception (which declared itself ferme when we arrived, but they opened when they saw us outside and baffled). We found a place to park in the public parking area nearby but it's a bit of a drag up hill to reach the hotel from there. Our room was quite large with a view over the park and river, and permanent white noise from the weir so we got no traffic noise at all. Dinner in their gastronomic restaurant was as good as expected but there is no a la carte, just a choice of 3 menus with everyone at the table having to choose the same one. I did enjoy dinner and the service was good too but I prefer to have a choice. One problem with the room was that the wifi didn't work - there were lots of hoops to jump through, and even then it didn't work. We both spent 15 minutes at reception with their 'wifi expert' and eventually just about got it working. I am pretty certain that the problem was that their digital certificate had expired but they wouldn't admit that. I suppose they get so few guests that they can muddle through with almost unusable wifi. Breakfast was semi-buffet but rather limited.