Fire Service College

Clean & free secure parking

Not applicable.

When we arrived the fire service college staff had no record of our booking! I showed them, from my phone my email from booking.com showing we had paid and booked a room. This was booked a long while ago. I checked in on line, only couple of days before as well. Anyway, the staff were very helpful, they could see from my phone i had booked..so even though they had not recieved the information from booking.com they arranged for us to stay in a room. Especially Monika, on reception, went out of her way to help us, kind, professional, friendly. We thought, staying at the the fire service college was excellent and of high standard.

We didnt like that booking.com hadnt informed them, as yet, that we were coming. If they had already been fully booked, we would have had to find, last minute, somewhere else to stay.

a very clean and comfortable room with all the facilities needed at a reasonable price. The security guards both on arrival and leaving were very pleasant with efficient handover and return of keys. we found the venue very interesting.

The big downside was access by public transport. We arrived 11 pm so there were no more buses and had to walk from Morton in Marsh. Whilst we are very keen walkers, and happened to only have small backpacks rather than luggage (which would’ve been a major constraint), we were in principal fine about walking, but it really wasn’t a very pleasant walk and would be extremely unpleasant if you were a solo female. possibly even a solo male. On leaving there was a bus but very poor information about it and had to wait a considerable time as it was delayed. There is no sign of a bus stop and no shelter. It was a very hot day, or it could well have been cold or raining, so not pleasant; also as there are no other humans around. The security guard is not within hailing distance. The other downside was very poor information upfront about what to expect and we were very surprised when we arrived. The grounds are absolutely huge and it is quite isolated. I wouldn’t have wanted to stay there alone. The security guards were very pleasant and handed over our keys but we were not given a Wi-Fi code and only realised when we got to our room that we didn’t have one and there was no means to get it. There was also no information whatsoever about possible catering until we got to the room where we discovered that breakfast was only served for one hour quite early and it wasn’t 100% clear that it was available for civilians in any case. If you want more icing on the cake, there could’ve been a better selection of teas. Whilst we appreciate that this is a training ground and clearly used for military as well as fire service personnel, there is a huge amount of manicured lawn and it would’ve been very nice to have seen some rewilding where troops/training don’t need to be, as it’s hard to believe the whole of those manicured grass areas are needed/used at any one time. And for military and fire service personnel the real world is not composed of manicured lawn and Tarmac!