Hotel food is always blah, isn’t it? Or so I thought, until now …
A fun game to play with the metropolitan elite, or indeed anyone south of Watford, is to ask them to locate Hexham on a map. Or Northumberland, for that matter. Many patches of the north, with the rural north-east being a particularly good example, feel like the Bermuda Triangle to southerners: mysterious, loosely defined and quite feasibly patrolled by monsters. To me, however, Hexham was subject of many a “nice drive out” from Carlisle in the 1980s, bumbling along B-roads towards this sedate market town with a grade I-listed abbey dating from AD674, several art galleries, plenty of places to eat stottie cake and a chance to learn about the Vindolanda fort on Hadrian’s Wall.
As a child, I did not appreciate Hexham’s beauty, and longed instead to be taken to the Gateshead MetroCentre to eat at Spud-U-Like and peruse Athena for sepia posters of hunks shifting tyres. But recently I returned and stayed at The Beaumont hotel and ate in its very fine restaurant. If I’m very honest, not a single local will thank me for alerting you to this chic, recently renovated, 33-room, townhouse-style hotel with a bar that will serve you a decent apricot bellini or a cold bottle of petit chablis to enjoy on tables close to the abbey’s grounds, because, until now, The Beaumont has been largely Hexham’s secret.
Perhaps I liked my Saturday night alone in Hexham so much because The Beaumont still retains an air of chipper, diligent, business-as-usual hospitality. It’s a mood that so many larger outfits have given up on right now, due to staff shortages, to can’t-be-arsedness and especially to irrational new post-Covid company policies that seem to be nothing more than budget-slashing masquerading as “keeping you safe”. Continue reading...
