caroline_edinburgh

Can anyone recommend reasonably priced accommodation near - ideally within a few minutes' walk of - Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons ? We are dining there for our 10th anniversary but balking at £460 for the cheapest room there (plus I think it's already full that night anyway). Flanneruk, this is sort of your patch, isn't it - can you help ? Suggestions gratefully received from anyone though ! Would prefer a nice pub or a modest-midrange hotel (up to c.£100 for a double); tend to avoid B&Bs but would consider if no better option. Thanks very much.

flanneruk

"can you help ?"

Not really. Living here, I know nothing about hotels: most of us drive or cab home, and most chums drive or cab back to London. Or cab it to the bus stop next to the M40, get the bus back to London then a cab home(seriously: it runs through the night)

I've always intended sussing out the Lambert Arms, which looks lovely on the A40 parallel with the M40 at the Oxford side of the Chiltern escarpment - but in 40 odd years driving up and down, never got round to it. Fox & Hounds in Watlington looks nice too, but it's just somewhere I drive past.

Did an awayday yonks ago at The Otmoor Lodge, Horton cum Studley. Memory's vague but website looks OKish

A useful source might be www.dailyinfo.co.uk/venues/hotels. You want places East or South of the ring road, but double check their postcode on Google maps, because the author's sense of direction strikes me as dodgy.

Actually on Oxford-area hotels, janisj's your lass. Hundred quid gets you not much more than a broom cupboard in Oxford itself - though there are quite a few OK and often cheapish (by Oxford standards) plastic places sort of on the ring road. All completely charm-free, though.

Cathinjoetown

There's The Lamb Inn in Burford on Sheep St. (really) that's nice.

tarquin

If you google Great Milton Oxfordshire, several cheap options come up, but you'll definitely need taxis to and from Le Manoir.

hetismij

The Oxford Belfry is I think the nearest hotel to Le Manoir. I have no idea what it is like though.

There are a couple of reasonable pubs/inns in Dorchester as I recall. The George? Also in Shillingford there are or at least were a couple.

Not sure what there is in Abingdon nowadays.

I shall be looking into places to stay in that general area later this year when we return to old haunts for a while. Sadly le Manoir will not be on the menu then

janisj

Wish I could help -- I lived for about 6 months just across the motorway (pre motorway -- ancient history) in Holton - near Wheatley. I don't think you'll find much/anything w/i walking distance. That corner of Oxfordshire is a bit light in the accommodations area. There used to be a wonderful old pile - Studley Priory Hotel in Horton-cum-Studley but I think it is long closed. (they used it for the exterior shots of Thomas More's home in A Man For All Seasons. Totally useless info for your hotel hunt though )

I know there is a pub in Little Milton - The Lamb Inn if I remember, but don't know if they rent rooms.

If you don't want to stay in Oxford, maybe look for places in/near Dorchester or Wallingford.

I'll try to think of other options.

flanneruk

"Studley Priory "

Part of the problem. Any decent size house round here going for a few million: far, far more demand from people who want it to live in than from people who want the aggro of running a hotel. Just about anything with four walls and roof (or even with three walls and no roof) is worth more as a house than as a pub, shop, church, barn, bus shelter or even phone kiosk.

Studley got turned back into a house just about as we moved into the area.

crellston

Check out http://www.crazybeargroup.co.uk/oxford/index.html a really unusual hotel just a couple of miles from Le Manoir. Probably more than £100p.n but way less than Le Manoir and you may get a deal..

Gordon_R

I can strongly recommend the Kingfisher Inn at Shillingford just a few miles away. We stayed there for 1 night earlier this year while walking a stretch of the Thames Path (which it's right next to), and were totally knocked out by the comfort of the place and the extremely pleasant owners. Its just a small place, and not luxurious but very cozy. I think we paid about 80 quid for B&B.
http://www.kingfisher-inn.co.uk/index.html

janisj

Oh - the location of the Kingfisher looks great - looks to be about 10 miles from Great Milton

caroline_edinburgh

Thanks very much everyone for all those quick responses - lots of options to investigate !

I suppose I was hoping that there might be a nice village, with a nice pub, right outside the gates of Le Manoir, but it seems nowhere is that close ? Or even within a mile or two ? Anyway I'll go away and investigate all your suggestions and their locations.

I hadn't even thought of staying in Oxford itself and since it's only one night and we are not planning to do any sightseeing, I don't think there's much point - especially if it's the most expensive place to stay.

Dorchester, blimey - stayed there for a few nights on a university field trip aeons ago, but don't remember much about it (other than that it was a lot nicer than Devizes which was the other place we stayed ). I wouldn't even have thought of it, what with it not actually being in the same county - but I suppose what that tells me is that I need to look at a good old-fashioned map !

Flanner, don't understand your "Living here, I know nothing about hotels" - I've stayed in more hotels in Edinburgh (7 so far) than anywhere else (Birthdays / anniversaries / girls' weekends / escaping a boys' weekend chez nous / dry rot.)

hetismij

Dorchester is the same county - it's in Oxfordshire, just as Great Milton is.

flanneruk

Dorchester, Oxfordshire (which is really known only to its fans, though its Abbey's got some of the most fabulous pre-Reformation carving in Britain) is nigh on 100 miles from Dorchester, Dorset (the one known to Hardy readers as Casterbridge, to Big Ears as where he got them to build Poundbury and to the flannerpooch for Maiden Castle).

There is a pub (The Bull) in Great Milton, which is a jolly pretty village. But it's got no rooms

caroline_edinburgh

Ah right - it didn't occur to me there might be 2 ! Thanks again.

caroline_edinburgh

On case anyone else is looking for the same, we ended up staying at the Bat & Ball pub in Cuddesdon, about 2.5 miles from Le Manoir. My TA review here - http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserR...e_England.html