Hellidon Lakes Hotel & Country Club

This was my second trip to a Q-​hotel, having visited one as part of a group last year.
This is a large modern purpose-​built hotel resort that focuses on conferencing, its health spa and particularly the 27-​hole golf course, set around a couple of artificial lakes. It is set in rolling Northamptonshire countryside, close to the pretty village of Hellidon, south west of Daventry. There are magnificent views (oddly the best are from the car park!).
The health spa also has a bowling alley as well as the swimming pool, gym, jacuzzi and steam room. The conference venue has 24 meeting rooms and the hotel 106 bedrooms, with over 200 car parking spaces, set in tiered car-​parks on the contours of the hill above the golf course.
As a hotel, it is very comfortable: the rooms are modern, spacious, with generous en-​suites. They are a little formulaic (with the bedroom layout of every other modern hotel) but I found the beds to be very good, and everything was very clean and well stocked (one small oddity — no shoe-​shining kit in the room).
The only thing to note though is that the rooms are not air-​conditioned, and even in October the room was quite warm and we had to leave the window open all day and night. There was a tower fan in the room — always a warning sign. In hot weather it could be rather uncomfortable.
For what was otherwise a very nice weekend, I had only two gripes. First, they didn’t seem to have enough staff, with queues at check-​in and check-​out. Not bad queues, but with one person on duty on the Sunday morning when I checked out, and half a dozen people in the queue, if any other guest had had a problem, we’d have been waiting. On the evening before they also had to close one of the bars, because they didn’t have enough staff for the four different groups attending. But they must surely have had a good idea of how many guests were staying? (And it is not the sort of place you can walk anywhere else.)
The other issue for me was the food: it was all right, but the Q-​hotel in Stratford-​on-​Avon provided our group with excellent buffet food one night and a set meal on the second, and Hellidon was a definite second best in comparison. Maybe it’s a staffing issue again?
Aside from that, we had a good time and I think the other groups did too, especially if you are after golf. It’s easily accessible from the Midlands — about a 15 minute drive to the A5 and M1, and easy to find.
Tip, if driving from the A361 junction at Charwelton, take the second right-​hand turning. The first takes you on a winding and slightly awkward road through Hellidon village: the second takes you straight to the hotel.

I was very impressed with this place. Yes, it does definitely have a rather corporate vibe (and that cannot really be complained about from my point of view on my visit because it was a corporate visit and I was with another hundred people from the company that I worked with).
I was there on one of those oh-​so-​popular-​nowadays-​teambuilding type activity exercises. First of all, it was a started off with obligatory tea and coffee and talking to all the people you know, while wondering who the hell all of these other people are.
The tea, coffee and snacks that were offered by Hellidon Lakes was really great and definitely plentiful. When the interminable PowerPoint presentations and speeches had ended, we repaired to the activities areas. Some of them were a little bit too «touchy-​feely get to know that girl in accounts» type team building, but some of them i.e. the laser Clay pigeon shooting, the archery, the bowling (always a personal favourite), and the human table football were great fun.
The bar was decorated to a high standard and all of the staff dealt with the huge amount of pre-​dinner drink requests in a great way.
When we all entered the conference room for our sit down dinner, all of the staff worked very hard to keep us happy and delivered food and drinks in a timely fashion. However, I could not wait to get my ass back down to the bowling alley while I downed a few vodkas. This side of things proved to be a great finish to a brilliant day.
Obviously, the other side to this whole visit was the quality of the hotel room I had and the experience I had was there. Well, I can tell you everything in this area was first class. If you have read some of my other hotel reviews in the past to see that I am sometimes a little harsh. Perhaps though, this is all a comparative thing, because when places get it right (like Hellidon Lakes does) I am more than happy with my stay and so eager to recreate the experience. The bathroom was fitted to a very high standard, and decorated in a very tasteful fashion. The shower would give Mike Tyson a run for is money in the pounding stakes.
The nice flat panel TV provided me with something to do while I waited for the rest of my colleagues to congregate in the bar area.
My bed was extremely comfortable and all of the linen was crisp and clean. The room was surprisingly quiet and isolated from exterior noise, despite a hundred drunken corporate types marauding until the early hours of the morning all around me.
I really enjoyed all aspects of Hellidon Lakes and really do not have any complaints about any aspect of the great activities, fantastic food, friendly, helpful staff, and the great room I was provided with.