The Royal Oak Hotel, Sevenoaks

...most of my life at the moment and in the quest to earn myself enough money to remove all of my debt and get on the property ladder, I have been working all hours that God sends and also travelling all over the country being a salesman, pre-sales and techie. This means that I have been staying in huge amounts of hotels. The ones that I have found on Ciao, I am setting about reviewing them.

So, onto the Royal Oaks in Sevenoaks. I was ...
...to our clients. Since the course was in Brasted and all of the hotels had been taken due to the inability of my company to book anything more than 10 minutes in advance, Sevenoaks was the nearest viable place to stay.

The royal oak hotel, with bed and breakfast priced at £110 was the only hotel with rooms available for the dates i required. It definitely wasn't my first choice since the website was amateurish and there was a distinct ... more

So, work has been taking up most of my life at the moment and in the quest to earn myself enough money to remove all of my debt and get on the property ladder, I have been working all hours that God sends and also travelling all over the country being a salesman, pre-sales and techie. This means that I have been staying in huge amounts of hotels. The ones that I have found on Ciao, I am setting about reviewing them.

So, onto the Royal Oaks in Sevenoaks. I was in Sevenoaks to undertake a techie course to enable me to design and analyse networks better and subsequently offer more services to our clients. Since the course was in Brasted and all of the hotels had been taken due to the inability of my company to book anything more than 10 minutes in advance, Sevenoaks was the nearest viable place to stay.

The royal oak hotel, with bed and breakfast priced at £110 was the only hotel with rooms available for the dates i required. It definitely wasn't my first choice since the website was amateurish and there was a distinct lack of information about the facilities provided. Also, £110 per night for bed and breakfast anywhere is a high price in my book for midweek business trips.

Booking was a bit of a farce. Because of the fact that I was using the company credit card that stays internally, I rang to confirm the booking and that it would be acceptable for me not to have the credit card with me. I was actually unable to pay for the trip in it's entirety, which was slightly annoying, and they took the work card with assurances that everything would be fine.

I asked for an email confirmation of the booking along with a receipt in order to present to the internal bods that look after that kind of thing and was a little annoyed to find that they expected me to have the credit card with me when i arrived. I emailed back with reference to the conversation earlier that day and then subsequently had to endure a series of subsequent emails until it was all sorted out for the second time.

I was a little apprehensive when I arrived, but was slightly heartened to find that there was ample parking on site and that the hotel was relatively quiet, meaning that check in should be easy. It was, well, relatively. Once we got past the language barrier and they realised that I was the person who had booked it on the company credit card, I was given a typically oversized key and told that my room was in the annex building at the other side of the car park.

Now, normally, I would be quite happy with this, since annex buildings are often newly built and the rooms are furnished to a high degree. My heart sank when i pushed open the door to the building and saw what can only be described as a poorly decorated east end of london pub. The carpet was red with some sort of horrible fleur de lis pattern and the walls were green. I trudged up the stairs with the vague hope that my room might be a little better and was sorely disappointed to find that it wasn't.

The bathroom had a dodgy lino checked floor, the worst mains powered shower i have ever experienced and a grimy little sink and bath. The complimentary toiletries were virtually non-existant, although they purported to be the platinum range.... The kind of platinum range where the title platinum is used to make something incredibly cheap and nasty appear just that little bit better.

The bed itself was fairly comfortable and nicely dressed and it was clean. The room was stiflingly hot and the window was single glazed with a wonderful view over the car park and main road. The TV and tea and coffee making facilities were inept. There was a corby trouser press and I must note that the man who owns that company must be very very very rich indeed. They are bloody everywhere and impossible to use properly, so i end up using them as posh coat hangers.

So, with the disappointment of the room (It did have wireless that was easy to break into) I wandered off to the bar to investigate the menus and the drinks available.

There are 2 eating establishments in the hotel. A little bistro area that was empty at 7:30pm on a Tuesday night, and a full blown restaurant, which was overpriced and full of the type of people that just couldn't be bothered to look around for anything else.

I suffered through some "rustic breads" well, 2 lukewarm bread rolls with fake butter; moving onto venison sausages, mash and a red wine gravy. The venison sausages were ok, although it is hard to get packaged sausages wrong. The potatoes were creamed (without cream) and lumped onto the plate and the red wine gravy was just that. Bisto with a slug of red wine in it. I'm not even going to mention the white chocolate mousse with orange for dessert because it was truly terrible. Tinned oranges should give you some idea though...

Overall, the 3 days passed quickly. Mainly because i was away all day and i have friends in the area that i descended upon a couple of nights due to not wanting to be anywhere near the hotel and then just arrived back there to sleep. There was no gym, no other facilities for occupation and no visible staff most of the time.

If this had been a hotel abroad costing £110 a night, then i guarantee it woul dhave ben 110x better. Please don't go or send any of your work colleagues here. 

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