Having left our own parrots at home we went and visited...More parrots! we've visted the birdland before and so we knew what to expect. The birds here are ones that have been handed in for various reasons and so don't always look traditionally at their best (some are extremely plucked). It was lovely to see a lot of the birds making progress and to fuss some of our favourites. Visited again later in the week because the children found out we'd snuck out there without them! love it so much no matter how many times i visit.

Having booked a hovercraft driving session, we decided to make a longer break of it and visit english heritage properties in the locality. For such a huge hotel, the standards were very high. Our only complaint was the lack of green vegetables with the restaurant meals - but maybe we could have helped ourselves from the buffet.

Myself and my boyfriend stayed 2 nights at the hotel. We were asked if we wanted to uprade our room for an extra £10 upon arrival so i decided to and i must say it was a lovely room and worth the extra money especially as we were staying for 2 nights. The leisure facilities are good although the gym is in much need of updating its equipment plus there was no music or atmosphere in there. The pool area was clean and ok altough too many children for my liking!! we ate in the hotel bar on the first night and the food was good if not a little overpriced for what we had, all nice quality food though. Breakfast was ok but clearly not enough staff on hand as we had to wait a while to be seated and then struggled to find a member of staff to ask for coffee from as they were all so busy running around, i think they need more staff! the breakfast food was filled regularly but would have liked to have seen more choice for example choice of scrambled egg and poached not just fried. We ate in the restaurant on the 2nd night and again they were short staffed as we had to wait ages to be seated and also to be seen to. The food though was very nice and good value. All in all we had a lovely 2 night break away, the hotel is very good overall and i would recommend it for a short break. I feel if they had more staff working in the restauarant and able to provide a better service i would rate this a 5 out of 5.