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Luxury hotel

The Bumoral Hotel

On the hill, at the top of Bumoral Drive

A red sandstone hotel on a grassy hill with steep slate roofs, a turreted clock tower and a grand double stair up to the terrace, seen across a fountain garden of red, blue and yellow flower beds with lamp posts and a three-tier stone fountain.

The Bumoral sits on the hill above the town as though it has never heard of Radworth. It is red sandstone, Scottish Baronial crossed with a Victorian railway hotel: crow-stepped gables, a clock tower with turrets hung off its corners, candle-snuffer roofs and a rusticated stone base that runs down into the hillside. The clock face says J. BUMORAL. The sign at the bottom of the drive says EST. 1888 and RESIDENTS ONLY.

Getting there is half the point. Bumoral Drive leaves the ring road and climbs for two and three quarter kilometres at twenty miles an hour, looping round the hill, with an avenue of seventy-nine trees for the last stretch. At the top there is a car park, and then a grand stair up to the terrace, because a hotel like this does not let you arrive at ground level.

Before the steps come the gardens: a fountain garden in beds of red, blue and gold, a rose walk, a bandstand on its own lawn, statues, topiary, and copses of trees round the park, where a herd of fallow deer grazes. There is a council plaque in the grounds naming it the Most Beautiful Place in Oakhaven, and from the fountain it is hard to argue.

Inside, the lobby is twenty metres by twelve and two storeys high, with a gallery round three sides on marble columns, a chequered floor and a grand piano. Five clocks over reception keep the time in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo and Skegness. In the middle of the carpet, on a plinth, a Scotch egg sits under a glass dome like the crown jewels.

A double-height hotel lobby: green marble columns with gilt capitals, green and gold patterned walls, a gallery with a railing round the upper floor, a chandelier, a black and white chequered floor, a grand piano in the foreground and a glass dome on a plinth in the middle of a crested carpet.
The lobby. The Scotch egg is under the dome, where it belongs.

The art is its own sort of joke. The Hay Wain With Trolley, Lady With A Vape, the Fighting Temeraire on a pedalo, a suit of armour taking a selfie and a chrome-pink balloon bust wearing a traffic cone. Some of it comes off the wall, if you brought a big enough bag.

The staff wear name badges and very straight faces. Laurence and Kenji wait on the restaurant under the chandeliers, Sebastian keeps the ballroom bar, Chef Alain has the kitchen in the basement, and the manager, as ever, is off duty. The guests, Crispin, Ottoline and the Major among them, have the look of people who have never once checked a price.

A hotel restaurant with dark green star-patterned walls and white tablecloths: a guest in a pale blue shirt sits at a laid table while two waiters in waistcoats and bow ties stand by, a candle chandelier behind them.
Dinner service. The guest has not asked the price, and will not be told it.

A night is £180 in a Traditional room, £260 in a Superior, £380 in a Deluxe and £950 in the penthouse suite, and it is all-inclusive: the bar pours champagne, the house cocktail (the Bumoral Royale), a single malt or a red wine, as long as there is a wristband on your arm. Lock your door from the inside, lie down in a proper bed and sleep through till seven. Each morning about one empty room in five is left ajar.

Or you blag it. The wristband changes colour every seven days, and guests have a habit of losing theirs in the bins along the drive. Find one in this week’s colour and the bar serves you like you belong; turn up in last week’s and you are barred for life. Get caught where you should not be and the staff ask you once, politely. The second time that day they ring security, and a pair of guards walk you all the way out to the fountain.

Down on the lower ground floor there is a spa: a pool under tall arched windows, a chequered floor and a row of wooden loungers, which on a wet afternoon is about as far from Radworth as you can get without a passport.

A hotel spa pool with a black and white chequered tile surround, wooden loungers along a red sandstone wall with tall arched windows, three guests relaxing, and the chrome ladder into the turquoise water in the foreground.
The spa, on the lower ground floor. Residents only, in theory.

If you came looking for a luxury hotel game, this is the posh end of one, and the wristband blag is the part I am proudest of. Asked what they would do first in GTA VI, a lot of people said check into a hotel. This one has a clock for Skegness.

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