Hopton House

It’s quite rare that I feel the urge to sit down and write about a bed and breakfast, in fact this is the first time so you’ll have to forgive the random approach to describing our time in the lap of luxury. I’m not a travel writer after all 😉

I’ve known about Hopton House Bed & Breakfast for some time and it’s one of those places where, once you browse the website and read a few reviews that you know you have to visit one day. As usual good intentions and plans to visit often turn out to mean you stay at home doing all those exciting jobs such as repaint the kitchen or clean out the chickens. The good intentions and plans were still there, we just kept putting them off, then one day Karen (who owns and runs Hopton House) announced on Twitter that she was holding a competition to win a night in the new Loft room. It was a challenging competition, with a difficulty level well suited to me, simply retweet the original message regarding the competition and Karen would pull a name from the hat after a day or so. Not expecting much I entered the competition and kept my fingers crossed, the next day I checked my tweets and discovered I’d won 🙂 So the good intentions and plans for the future changed to a quick search of available nights which matched up with our time off work; then a few short weeks later and we were in the car heading south.

The drive to Hopton House was the perfect build up to the bed and breakfast with quiet roads passing through some outstanding Shropshire countryside. Having stayed in the past at those roadside lodges where you turn off a motorway, park up a hundred yards later, and step into a room that is so identical to the other thousand or so throughout the hotel chain that you could be anywhere the difference couldn’t be more pronounced. The trees were almost glowing in their Autumn glory as the Sun started to drop beneath the horizon as we turned off the road and into the driveway at Hopton House.

Karen came out to greet us with her dogs Murphy and Mitsi (both dogs were nice and friendly especially if you arrive armed with dog biscuits ;-)). After a brief “here’s where you’ll find…” she led us to the Loft room

The Loft room is located away from the main house and gives you a more secluded feeling, sometimes when you visit a bed and breakfast you feel a little like intruders in other peoples houses, with the Loft room you get your own front door and more importantly no one dancing above your head at 2 o’clock in the morning (something that has happened at a couple of places in the past). One of the first things you notice in the Loft room is how light the room feels, despite being as the name implies, in the loft space with the sloped ceilings and exposed beams you don’t get the cramped feeling I normally associate with lofts – well the loft in our house requires a ladder, head torch, and the desire to wander around bent double for a while 😉 As Karen shows us around the room you know they have not skimped on anything, the room oozes comfort and I can’t wait to kick my shoes off and relax.

After the brief tour of the room Karen leaves us to get comfortable, it doesn’t take long, the room has a huge bed, and I mean huge. Yes I did resist the temptation to throw myself back onto it, but it was difficult; besides, I did not wish to disturb Ted who was keeping the bed warm for us.

To one side of the bed is a two seater sofa, and on the other side an armchair, it would be difficult to choose which one I’d sit in to get the best angle to view the HD TV and Blu-Ray setup from but some trial and error soon sorted that quandary 🙂

Turning from the bedroom to the bathroom and you are faced with a bath that you’d expect to see in a magazine – free standing beneath a skylight which on a clear night allows you to lie back in the bath and watch the stars for a while.

It would be easy to pass over the little details that makes the stay so special, from the little soap by the sink…

to the comprehensive refreshments area

The room also has a silent refrigerator, now I’m one of those dubious people about advertisers claims of ‘silent appliances’ but this really was silent. It also had some bottled water inside and a bottle of fresh milk, so no trying to prize open a plastic carton of year old milk.

I know you don’t go away just to sit in a room watching TV and having baths, but the Loft room really does make the time you spend inside a pleasure. The bed really is as comfortable as it looks, to the point where I can hardly remember sleeping so well. The first morning we woke to mist filled valleys and a distinct chill in the air, always being ones to wake early we went for a wander in the garden to say hello to the chickens and look at the views.

Now we come to the breakfast, as we are both vegetarian finding a bed and breakfast that can cater for us is certainly getting easier but there is often a limited choice as to what we can eat. Hopton House provided us with not only a choice but a menu that was free from any meat related options all together. The breakfasts on their own are worth staying for, with just enough food to fill you up and keep you going throughout the day and of course it’s really good to know that the eggs you are eating have come from the chickens that enjoy wandering around the garden outside the dining room window.

I can’t fault our stay at Hopton House, it was a break in the lap of luxury, the only real draw back is you never want to leave 🙂

Remember you can follow Hopton House on Twitter @HoptonHouseBnB it’s well worth it 😉

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5 Thoughts to “Hopton House”

  1. What a delightful place. Looks like you had a great stay – and chickens to make you feel really at home!

    1. It really was delightful, and the chickens did help us settle in quickly 🙂

  2. Looks like a relaxing little spot in a lovely part of the country. Well done on winning the competition and thank you for sharing the details of your stay. I’d heard about Hopton House before and at first couldn’t work out where… then I realised when I started reading your article… it was through Twitter.

    1. Twitter is great for making unexpected connections, and yes, it really was a lovely part of the country.

      1. I must admit, I didn’t “get” Twitter at first but, the more I used it, the more I realised it’s potential.

        To be fair, it hasn’t brought us many enquiries just yet – in fact, only the one, but that did convert into a booking for us, so so far it has a high conversion rate! 🙂

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