Having read other peoples reviews we were a bit worried about what awaited us at the Tickled Trout. However, MacDonald Hotels that we have stopped at in the past have always been excellent so we booked anyway. I am glad that we did.

The location was extremely convenient for us, being just a few yards from J31 of the M6 and very easy to find. For us, an ideal stopping off point on a long journey north.

We stopped on a Friday night and received a friendly greeting on arrival.

The bedroom was large and excellent as was the bathroom which contained a bath and a a shower. It was very clean and very comfortable. Despite it's close proximity to the motorway, we heard no noise and had a good nights sleep.

Breakfast was excellent with a large selection of fine products and service to match. Items requested were bought promptly and the servers were very friendly and helpful.

We were very happy with our stay and would recommend the Tickled Trout to those wishing to find a pleasant overnight stop convenient to the motorway.

We stayed at the Tickled Trout on a Saturday night in October. Not our ideal choice of hotel but we needed a hotel in the area and thought it would do.
Our "Executive room" was clean and in good condition. It had a view of the car park and motorway which was a shame as the other side of the hotel overlooks the river.
We had dinner in the hotel restaurant; this turned out to be next to a function room in which a wedding reception was taking place. The disco music from the wedding drowned out most conversation in the restaurant. It was completely overpowering but there was nothing we could do except grin and bear it. We couldn't have a drink in the hotel bar as it had been taken over by drunken wedding guests. We accepted all of this given the low standard of hotel.
But things got worse when we went to bed. We were woken by noise coming from another bedroom. It turned out the bride and groom and 16 guests had decided to continue their celebrations in their bedroom. It was a very rough wedding party judging by the appearance & state of many of the guests. So it was not surprising that their celebrations consisted of shouting, screaming, arguing and banging of furniture in addition to loud music. By 2.30am it was clear that the hotel staff were doing nothing to stop the noise. Guests in several rooms could be heard banging on walls to try to get the wedding guests to be quiet. But to no avail. We eventually rang the night porter who took a long time to answer the phone. He advised that he had not even been to the room but had only phoned them and asked them to be quiet. Needless to say the noise continued & we had a very sleepless night. We discovered the next morning that another guest eventually called the police and the wedding couple were finally asked to leave the hotel at 4.00am. We had an early start the next morning and were extremely disappointed with the hotel staff's handling of the situation. Many other guests were affected by the noise and were clearly unhappy. The duty manager was not at all apologetic but told us there was nothing that the hotel could have done. We were appalled at his lack of concern. We would have tolerated this noise for a short period of time but it was totally unacceptable to allow it to continue through most of the night.
The hotel clearly takes wedding business at the risk of disturbing and upsetting individual residential guests. We were not warned at time of booking that the hotel was being taken over by a wedding party and that the restaurant would be affected.
Needless to say we will not be returning to the hotel and will certainly be wary of staying in other MacDonald hotels given their lack of concern for their guests.

I stayed here last week for 4 nights.
the room was nice and clean, the bathroom was also very good.
the bed was comfortable and the suroundings were quite nice too.The portions in the dining room seemed to vary nightly.
(there were 5 of us) it seemed to depend on who was on duty in the kitchen , as to how good the meal was.
the bar prices were astonishingly high.
a normal pint was over £3, a bacardi (single) with coke was nearly £6, tea and coffee was £3 per cup.
so we ended up buying carry outs from up the road and drinking in our rooms.
note also, the tv channls are seriously lacking. only bbc1/2
itv1/.c4/c5/ and cnn. oh yes and some music channel with a bad picture.
I wouldnt bother comming here again.

room appeared clean on arrival.
the lights were witched on
pubic hairs could be seen in abundance on the bathroom floor there was a dubious stain on the front of the wash basin.

the two glasses provided in the bathroom and two in the room on closer inspection were stained and dirty

management was informed and the matters were rectified.

dinner was overpriced

on leaving the receptionist failed in her basic duty in completing a very simple transaction of handling my bill and assuring that we returned .