Our Time at The Victoria
We haven't stayed — but we keep eating there
Let's get one thing out of the way first.
We've never actually stayed at The Victoria Hotel.
We've heard very good things about the rooms — including from people who return year after year — but our experience of The Victoria has mostly involved arriving through the front door hungry.
And they've always been rather good at fixing that.
The bar and restaurant sit just off the entrance and, on a couple of occasions, we've simply wandered in and asked whether there was any chance of breakfast.
Dog in tow.
We've always been made to feel completely welcome.
A proper hotel breakfast
Breakfast here is exactly what we want a hotel breakfast to be.
A good cooked breakfast, proper coffee with refills if required, and juice and cereal available if you fancy them too.
Nothing particularly complicated or fashionable.
Just a very nice breakfast at what we've found to be a surprisingly reasonable price.
On our last visit we'd set off ridiculously early from Beadnell and walked along the coast to Bamburgh.
By the time we reached The Victoria, breakfast had become rather less of a luxury and considerably more of a medical necessity.
Suitably refuelled, we headed back out.
Thirteen miles by the time we eventually returned to Beadnell.
Breakfast earned.
Not just breakfast
Tom has ventured beyond the breakfast menu too and can confirm that the steak and chips went down very nicely.
Which may not constitute exhaustive restaurant research, but he seemed happy enough with his findings.
And what about staying here?
This is where we need to be careful.
We haven't stayed, so we're not going to tell you what the bedrooms are like.
But we can tell you what we've heard.
One evening Tom got chatting to a chap in the bar who was there with his Labrador. He told Tom that he returns to The Victoria every year, rates the rooms highly and particularly likes how welcome the dog is made.
That's not our review of the accommodation — just a recommendation passed across a Bamburgh bar from one dog owner to another.
And somehow those recommendations often tell you rather a lot.
What we can confirm is that The Victoria does offer dog-friendly accommodation, with pets allowed in its dog-friendly rooms for a nightly supplement.
Somewhere we'll keep coming back to
What we can judge is how The Victoria feels when you walk through the door.
Welcoming.
We've arrived casually dressed after walking, asked for breakfast without any great planning, brought the dog with us and never felt as though we were somehow intruding on a hotel.
That's important to us.
Sometimes hotels can feel like they're primarily for the people staying upstairs.
The Victoria doesn't.
Its bar is officially open to non-residents too, so dropping in for something to eat or drink is very much part of what they offer.
So while we'll leave reviewing the bedrooms to people who've actually slept in one, we're perfectly happy recommending breakfast.
And we'll definitely be back.
Heather & Sand verdict: A welcoming, dog-friendly Bamburgh hotel where we've enjoyed very good breakfasts at reasonable prices, along with friendly service and an easy-going atmosphere. We haven't stayed overnight, so our recommendation is deliberately limited to the food and hospitality we've actually experienced — but on that basis, The Victoria gets a definite thumbs up from us.
