The Goodwood Hotel

For our third review of this hotel, we share with you our thoughts and photos of our recent 2024 visit to Goodwood. It’s not a posh hotel, very basic actually, but quite popular, car park is always full, with either hotel guests or those using the pleasant Spa and health club. The hotel is cosy, well maintained, comfortable. The rooms are pleasant enough, beds very comfortable, and ideal for disabled as they are high enough to allow you to slide into bed. There’s just enough room to be able to move around, and the accessible rooms are very nice, pleasantly decorated, with enough furniture to make a short break worth while. The hotel has two restaurants, one you use for breakfast and lunch, before that closes at 6.00pm, then the main evening restaurant stands alongside the hotel itself, just hope it’s not raining when you need it. The room is ok, nothing flashy, the bar is small, and old looking, it’s ok for pre-dinner drinks, but we would have hoped for better. Dogs are allowed inside bar, and that’s ok if dogs get along, but as its small, you have to hope people know how to control them, it got a bit noisy on our visit. The one problem we feel with the hotel, is that’s it’s a long narrow type of buildings, and it’s quite an effort to move from one end to the other. Our accessible room on this visit was close to reception area, so easy to get in out of car park space, but to get to breakfast, or early evening dinner before 6.00pm, you need to get wheelchair through rather narrow doorways, and then face lots of turns and twists as you make your way towards the restaurant, which is at the furthest position from reception, and there are slopes to contend with. The restaurant itself is pleasant enough, you will find room to place your wheelchair, and the food is nice, basic with a reasonable choice. The bar is tucked away in the corner of the restaurant, and not many seating spots, we struggled a bit with the chair, but coped. You may feel we have given the hotel a few negative reports, but we personally enjoyed our two visits here over the years, SO DO READ OUR OTHER REVIEWS AS WELL so as to get a better feel about the hotel.

The hotel has its own health club, and seems to be very popular with locals. It has good car parking with just one disabled bay, close to its own entrance. You arrive at the main gate (photo one) and drive all the way ahead and then go over to the left and reach another entrance into main hotel, with a disabled bay available (photo 2) Entering, you turn left and follow corridors around, which is easy enough for wheelchairs, and go down the ramp towards Bar restaurant but this time stay straight ahead at the far end (photo 3) and arrive at the health club reception desk (photo 4) which also has a clothes outlet with many gym items on sale (photo 5) Their main car park for the health club however is by continuing around to pass the other car parks and reach their own car park (photo 6) which is level for you to enter, and into reception area. Just to the right you have a number of electrical charging points available (photo 7) right next to a disabled bay, handy for topping up while you go and enjoy a pleasant swim, or training facilities. Once you have paid for the programme you wish to do today, a card is presented to you, and this will allow you to enter the indoor pool area (photo 8) and enjoy its swimming pool (photo 9) A jacuzzi and dip pool is also available (photo 10) Going all the way round you will reach a passage which leads to the training facilities (photo 11) with modern gym aquipment (photo 12) and all set up and ready to go (photo 13) We were also pleased to see they have a golf course, in very good order, and the first hole is right outside the hotel itself (photo 14). All in all, it seems to be very popular, but a bit expensive we thought, at a monthly charge of over £70. but it’s a well looked after health club, you get what you pay for we guess. We would recommend the club however, due to its being so clean, with modern aquipment, and part of the very nice hotel itself.

With staying here at the hotel, it included in its cost, two breakfasts, which we wanted to try, and then to enjoy evening dining with them, and let you know our thoughts. We left our room about 8.15am for breakfast (photo 1) and walked around the corridors (photo 2) and down the ramp on the wooden passage (photo 3) to reach the bar restaurant (photo 4) where we were booked in and led to our breakfast seats. It is a delightful buffet start, and you order your selected hot breakfast with the waitress first of all, while hot drinks and orange juice is brought to you. It was certainly a nice selection on offer, with cereals and breads that you pick up yourself (photo 5) with fresh fruit and meats available (photo 6) and a choice of cold drinks you help yourself to (photo 7) and the restaurant is large enough to offer you space so as to be able to eat from your wheelchair, or place it out of the way while you sit at a table (photo 8) The hot breakfast was very good, well cooked and presented, good choice available as well, certainly filled us up. Following breakfast, we had enough time to sit in the lounge (photo 9) and read the daily paper they have for you to read, before we headed off to enjoy visiting other places. In the evening, dinner is taken at the same restaurant, so we made our way along corridors (photo 10) and along to the Bar restaurant (photo 11) if you so wish to eat there, and we chose a starter each (photo 12) like the very nice crayfish fish cake, light and fluffy with a delicate easy taste, and we relaxed to savour our dishes (photo 13) before tucking into the main course (photo 14) good old fish and chips ah. As regards the food in the evening, starters were very nice, although my husband was not quite as keen on main courses, sometimes chefs can just overdo messing around with dishes, adding tastes not always to peoples liking, and this was so with our choices, the burger itself not to his liking, and he did not like these chips that seen to be the norm nowadays, with skin on and added tastes, stick to good old style chips. However, I had the Carbonnara, which was delicious. There is another restaurant available for evening dining, at the very pleasant Farmer Butcher Chef restaurant (photo 15) with its own bar (photo 16) and a very good attractive barn like restaurant (photo 17). It has a good reputation for excellent meals, and certainly looks inviting, but it’s wholesome meat dishes on offer, and we are not meat lovers, so did not join them for dinner. We did not see any vegetarian dishes on offer.