By The Way

I thought I should just add a note by way of saying that I have not forgotten about this blog.

The main purpose of this is that I discovered at one of the conferences that people were booking into more expensive hotels than they needed to, simply because the information was not readily available.

There are many hotels on the west side of Birmingham which have very satisfactory accommodation at reasonable cost.  These are mainly centred on the Hagley Road, which is a major bus route, and Bearwood.  Two of the Bearwood hotels, Hotel Dinara and the Bearwood Court Hotel, are about a mile north of the Hagley Road, but on the No 82 bus route directly to the City Centre.

It is time I looked around again to update some of this information.  Most of it is still valid for phone numbers and location.  And some of the hotels do not need my help.  For example, Fountain Court Hotel usually gets fully booked for a political party conference about 6 months ahead, with people wanting to go back there.

I have NOT included some of the main hotel chains, nor City Centre hotels, since they don't need this kind of advertising.  And there is one of the national chains which I would not recommend anyway.  My wife and I stayed at one of their hotels just outside the M25 since we had to be in London rather earlier than usual.  I got very little sleep - the bed was uncomfortable, the location in the room was noisy because it was too close to the night time disco part of a wedding reception.  The breakfast included stale croissants, which tasted like they had just come out of the freezer.  And they forgot to add our Nectar points when we paid the bill.  By contrast, my sister-in-law stayed at Hotel Dinara a few years ago.  She had a very good time there, and reported that it was comfortable, clean, and the food was good.