Last week, we hit the road en famille to spend a night in Bath’s Francis Hotel. What with dropping off a little pussy cat in the Cotswolds and dinner with old friends, plus a little car trouble along the way we didn’t actually arrive until after ten…

Nonetheless, we were warmly welcomed and shown up to a really quite sumptuous room. Originally seven Georgian townhouses that were made into a single residency in the 19th century, the hotel recently underwent a complete refurbishment returning it to its former Regency glory retaining many delightful features as well as benefiting from a fun and flamboyant décor. Part of the M Gallery collection of hotels (a gorgeous range of hotels all over Europe), the Francis is in Bath’s central Queen Square (near the stunning Circus and Royal Crescent) and has 98 rooms, all individually decorated. Most, as ours did, have a lovely four poster bed, which you just can’t beat!

Of course, we had some late night snacks with the intention of another episode of House of Cards, but instead all three of us crashed out in the enormous four poster bed. Like a proper holiday, we slept in, nearly missing breakfast the next morning, only managing to grab a table in the sunlit downstairs dining with minutes to spare. To be fair, it was all very relaxed with quite a few tables staying on well past 10am. Big thumbs up!

As well as a delicious buffet including a full English breakfast, there was an à la carte menu to choose from and I couldn’t resist going for the eggs Benedict. So addicted to this right now! The service was incredible. I asked if our room could be made up while we ate, not a problem! Gus was being grizzly and seemed to have developed a temperature overnight, and a waitress immediately suggested she bring some ice and towels to help cool him. It’s the small things like this that really make you remember somewhere and want to go back.

Finally we finished up and had a little explore around the rest of the hotel. We’d had big plans for the rest of the day, originally a trip to Legoland (closed for winter unfortunately) then a visit to the model village and railway at Bekonscot as we headed back to London. But with Gus not well, we decided to skip it and got all packed up only to discover we had a flat battery (par for the course when you drive a car from the late 80s, ahem – my passion, this car, even though I don’t drive, ha!). But within minutes, the hotel had got us a jump start and we were happily on our way. Just one more pub lunch on the way back to take away the pain of way too much traffic on the M4 for a weekday…!

A bit thank you to the Francis Hotel for having us to stay and taking such good care of us!

Stylonylon was a guest of the Francis Hotel.