The Grand Hotel Scarborough revisited

After a tortuous rail journey from The New Forest to Scarborough we were so looking forward to checking in at The Grand Hotel. We decided to walk from the station to the hotel to stretch our legs and get some much needed fresh air. Our conversation was about a comfortable bed, dinner overlooking the sea and maybe even a stroll along the shore before our long day was going to end. The hotel’s imposing façade began to loom ahead of us and our hopes rose with each further step we took.

The first impression we had of the groundfloor was that despite looking a little tired and worn it was grand. We were allocated a room on the third floor. The main staircase swept elegantly up to the first floor but as we had some luggage we opted to take the lift. Our first impressions began to deteriorate. The lift was tucked in behind the reception area. Marking out a square on the floor in front of it were strips of black and yellow hazard tape that held down the carpet tiles. The lift door grunted and groaned open. There was only just enough room for us and our small amount of luggage. It grunted and groaned to the third floor.

We should have realised in that trembling metal casket, that felt less secure and more claustrophobic than the capsule used to rescue those Chilean copper miners in 20210, that we were embarking on what was to become a cortege of aggravations.

Our room was at the end of a corridor. The door looked like it had been forced open in a police raid. Inside every inch of the floor of this large room was taken up with beds. There was a double, single and sofa bed all made up to welcome guests. It reminded us of emergency centres set up in gymnasiums and school halls in the wake of natural or man made disasters. Entrance to the en suite was through a door in the same condition as the outer one and all the fittings were loose.

‘It is the family room but if you are not happy then we will find you another room’ the receptionist who had accompanied us to the room.

We were not happy. Even if we had trekked across the desert on a donkey in the middle of winter, my wife was about to give birth and we were offered a room in The Grand I am fairly certain we would have declined any invitation to stay.

Another room was allocated. Back into the service lift for the grunting and groaning journey to the upper reaches of the building. Another long corridor which was even shabbier than the one on the third floor. Another door that had seen better days which we had to force open. Yes, it was a double room with en suite and a water feature. Not the Zen type that is meant to soothe and relax the tired traveller with peaceful thoughts. No such luck in ‘The Grand’. The light fitting attached to the ceiling was a water feature. Water dripping into it from the floor above and then overflowed drip by drip on to one of the beds.

‘No. We can’t stay here’ we decided and headed back to reception again. We told the receptionist about the water.

‘How odd’ the receptionist said ‘I can assure you all of our rooms are checked for cleanliness and safety by our housekeeping staff before our gusts arrive. Oh well, if you insist we do have another room on the fifth floor. Here are the keys.’

We hoped, naively, for third time lucky with a room on the fifth floor. Another corridor, another beaten up door that was reluctant to open and we were in. An estate agent would describe it as ‘compact’ or ‘intimate’. Two short words that fully explained there wouldn’t be room to swing the proverbial cat. Being in the attic it was suffocatingly stuffy. We opened the window to let in some freshening air. The unintended consequence of this was being assailed by the cries of the seagulls nesting and resting along the balustrade outside our window. They were using the façade of the hotel as if it was a cliff face that had to be covered in guano. From the street this part of the building looked like a patisserie chef had iced it but the reality was very different from inside our room. If the owners wanted to develop another revenue stream they could have mined this stuff and sold it. Just as the Amercans did in the 1860’s when they annexed Navassa Island near Tahiti to exploit its huge previously untapped resource of guano.

‘Oh well. It will have to do but only for one night’ was our collectve decision ‘and this place is definitely not grand.’

Honestly, we were just too tired to venture away from the hotel. So, we resigned ourselves to the canteen which was misleadingly described as a “Restaurant” on the sign in the reception area. A cullinary throwback to the 1970’s when factories provided meals for the employees with industrial furniture, lino flooring and an ambience of stale food. Service was of the DIY variety from a servery where aluminium trays like those ones school meals used to be served in. They were set in a conter length bain marie and under heat lamps dehydrating the battered fish, an indefinable roast of some sort, a meat pie, diced mixed vegetables from a freezer centre, chips and a cauldron of artificially dark gravy that was covered in a brown congealing miscus or even mucus were our stark choices.

Shock, horror, anger and frustration had all come and gone. What other emotion was there left for us to experience? Laughter. Not the outward uproarious type but the knowing glance between ourselves, the muffled giggle and comments pointing out the whole farcical panoply of a disastrous attempt at hospitality as we sat looking across the bay through opaque widows that were like cataracts and made the view appear through a milky film.

The coal mining industry in Yorkshire may have died several years ago but the skills had not.

Dessert was ice cream from catering sized tubs in chest freezers. To reach the tubs customers had to delve deep into the cavernous freezers and chisel away as best they could to get some dessert. We watched a customer with their feet off the floor and their head out of sight in the depths of the freezer. It was then that we realised that we had travelled so far along the road of tragedy that the only thing left for us was farce. We had found an escape in shared smirks, giggles and laughter.

Restful sleep was impossible. We had hoped that once the sun disappeared that the seagulls outside our window would hunker down quietly for the night. They did not. Somewhere way below us was an extractor unit from the kitchen which kept running all night long. And then, the in house entertainment may possibly have been a karaoke. There was only one song, “Amazing Grace” whose refrains permeated through every crook, crack and crevice of the old building as if it was damp leaching into brickwork. The gulls provided backing. Even after the music stopped we could still hear it in our heads as if it had ingressed into our souls to replace the thrum from the extractor unit.

‘To accomplish big things, I am convinced you must have big dreams’ Conrad Hilton (1887 – 1979) and founder of the Hilton Hotel chain.

This hotel was designed by Cuthbert Broderick (1821- 1904) and was built in the 1860’s, coincidentally about the same time America took control of Navassa Island. His vision was to design and build one of the first purpose built hotels in Europe. The footprint of the building forms a gigantic “V” as a tribute to Queen Victoria. It has four towers to represent the seasons of the year, twelve floors for the months and when first built it had three hundred and sixty five rooms. That is how grand it was in concept, design and build. No one could ever accuse Cuthbert Broderick of not having big dreams and accomplishing them in the same business as Conrad Hilton.

Alas, it would take a gargantuan financial will and physical effort to restore the hotel to its former glory and live up to the first part of its name, ‘Grand’ to become a fitting memorial to the architect.

Our visit took place in August 2016. While reworking this piece and in the interests of fairness I checked out the reviews on some of the hotel booking websites to see if things had changed for the better. They had to as they couldn’t get much worse.

Despite some glowing reviews, whose verascity has to be questioned, the overall feedback continues to be bad. Compliments are responded to with a generic ‘thank you’. Critcisms, which outnumber the compliments, are not always responded to but when they are it is with an answer as anodyne as melted ice cream served on a warm plate. The hotel has even had the dubious honour of being mentioned in the mainstream media for its poor standards.

Much like condemned prisoners we went down to breakfast as early possible. It was self served in the same place as dinner and in the same style. While we waited for service to start we stepped out and on to the terrace. Cigarette ends littered the floor. Not just from one night but from several nights. That is unless of course the hotel guests were particularly heavy smokers. Empty glasses from the bar kept company with empty bottles. And a partially decomposed seagull was wedged into a corner.

Once service was started the depths of our expectations were fully met.

After breakfast we walked over to the Travelodge across the road. At the reception desk we pleaded refugee status. We were told we were not the first and certainly wouldn’t be the last wanting to escape from ‘The Grand’. The receptionist hummed and hawed over her screen while holding our fate at her fingertips. We dreaded the prospect of another night with the seagulls and “Amazing Grace”. She looked up from her screen with a blank expression that would mislead even the most experienced poker player. She held a dramatic pause like those painful gameshow hosts who prolong the fate of the contestants while dramatic music plays in the background. We feared the worst.

‘I have one room left for tonight. I’m sorry it hasn’t got a sea view.’

Phew!

Seaview or not we had escaped from the hell hole otherwise known as ‘The Grand Hotel’ in Scarborough without having to dig a tunnel through the underlying Jurassic strata or hide ourselves in a rubbish lorry like WWII POWs.

*'Revisited means that I have reprised my original article published on another self publishing platform and revised it for my book entitled 'Coddiwompling'. After all, does anyone believe that after this experience we would really want to go back and stay there?