Where's the worst place you've ever stayed?

lol I am about 30 miles away rom Blackpool and I know what you say vampirequeen lol....yes Blackpool is very tacky, noisy can be dirty etc..they have tried to smarten up the front and the Prom...I myself would never go for a holiday but we do go for the day with Grandson now and again and visit the water park and we are due to take him to Nickolodean land (rided funfare) etc..but many yrs ago the whole of lancashirie use to got o Balckpool during wakes weeks, lol...im afraid Blackpool will always be Blackpool and noted for "kiss me quick" hats,rock, chips and amusement arcades... lol..

When the DC where small we used to jump in the car and take them to see the Illumination, it was a huge adventure being out in the dark, but usually they were asleep before they saw the lights.

I think a Gite in Brittany C1991 very small, smelled of damp. The bed was so saggy I couldn't sleep in it with my dodgy back and we had to stack the bedframe and sleep with the mattress on the floor. Everything went wrong that holiday. I broke a crown on my front tooth opening a water bottle. (Daft idea I know.) l went into the lovely but rough sea with my glasses on got knocked over and lost them completely. I put a hot cup of tea on the car roof to cool only for it to fall straight back through the open sunroof and then waiting for the ferry home I plonked my bum down on a bag of pears on the passenger seat. I can't blame Brittany for that but it added to the general tone of the holiday.

On our first "proper" holiday after we were married, we booked a caravan at Mawgan Porth in Cornwall, on a site called Gluvian (it`s OK, it`s not there now), we travelled down overnight on the train, not easy with 3 very young children, arrived in Newquay at around 7am, thought it was lovely, got a bus to Mawgan Porth, equally lovely, then had to walk three quarters of a mile to the caravan site with luggage and 3 very tired children, to be told that the caravan was being cleaned and wasn`t available till 2pm. Walked back into Mawgan Porth, came back later, and the caravan was horrible. It was really very small, looked as if it hadn`t been cleaned in months, and when we got ready for bed that night, the blankets had maggots in them! Luckily we had our own sheets! I know we should have kicked up a fuss, but in those days we were still young and naive, and not into creating bother, so we put up with it for a week, then moved on to a different caravan, at Treyanon Bay, which was perfect.

Romania in 1971. I had been very seriously ill and endured a lot of major emergency surgery over a long period and my father thought it would be nice to have a relaxing family holiday in a country we had never previously visited. Wrong!

The hotel restaurant grouped visitors according to their nationality and they clearly didn't have a particularly favourable attitude towards Brits. Breakfast the first day was disgusting and inedible, so dear Dad moved us to the Dutch section. Massive consternation from the staff but my father produced his Dutch passport and there was pretty much no way anyone could do anything.

A broken sewer outpoured into the swimming pool, so we didn't use that

We booked a trip to an evening of traditional Romanian song and dance. Brits were located behind pillars, where it was difficult to see anything. The meal was served, after a couple of hours, and it was inedible. Normally, well-behaved, I lost the plot and slung my piece of unidentifiable grey meat across the floor – where it bounced five times. We left and took a taxi back to our hotel, but couldn't have anything to eat because the hotel had to order food from a central supplier in the morning and had not included us because of our outing.

Finally, when we boarded the plane to go home, there was one passenger too many so we all had to produce our tickets, boarding passes and passports at gunpoint. Someone was removed, also at gunpoint, and the plane took off very late. Consequently, we ran out of time and we couldn't overfly Hungary so made an unscheduled stop in Munich. Fine, but couldn't take off for several hours. No cafés were open but we found a tap and a glass (acting as a vase, so we slung the flowers and rinsed it). Eventually, we arrived back in London, having been threatened with a diversion to Luton, 25 hours after leaving Romania. Emperor Hirohito was making a state visit to the country so getting from Heathrow home was also an issue.

Not a great convalescence.

A block of holiday flats in Le Touquet in early October, quite sunny though. It was a big sort of Anglo French reunion, and lots of our hosts had holiday homes in Le Touquet. Most were lovely, some were positively luxurious and ours...was the pits, damp, no hot water (the owners weren't there) every other flat empty, lumpy beds, wind howling round the block. It must have been a while ago because my period started, so the lack of hot water was serious. Mon dieu!

A gite in Dordogneshire. Lumpy bed with springs sticking in you (remember those?). A combo sink, fridge and electric hotplate on the draining board and a loo in the barn with bats, mice and spiders. We lasted three days and then ran away.

Two holidays - both in hired caravans! One was at Strontian, when we opened the caravan door and a chicken walked out, having left it's calling cards before it left. However, the owners did leave us a nice plate of jam tarts (uncovered) as a welcome. The other was on Islay where we were shown into the caravan by the proud owner, who said the sink blocked up every day, but produced a NEW plunger for us to use. The cushion covers were one big hole (each one) with a frill round the edges. On the second-last night it poured with rain, and the roof leaked over our bed.......so next morning I trudged over to the farmhouse to tell them. I came back with a bag of home-made scones, but no promise to mend the roof. It rained again the next night, so we slept on the benches in the living-room part of the caravan!

When DD was about 10 I booked a special offer cheap holiday at Pontins in Southport - as a then single parent it was all I could afford.
Well, the mattresses of the beds were covered in hard, crackly plastic, the fridge didn't work, the inside of the kettle was furry with limescale, and our chalet was next-door to a couple of girls who seemed to have come just to pick up men and party! The mini-tv just ate up 50ps and I spent the week in a sleep-deprived haze - fortunately DD loved the funfair and especially the swimming pool, but I would never go there again. I know you can't expect luxury for a cut-price holiday, but there are limits!

The Museum Hotel in Margate! Sounded quaint but it was just a mess! All kinds of collections piled all over the place..some were quite interesting but amongst the tat hard to see! the bedroom had a four poster but the bed sheets etc were all a but retro: nylon sheets and flouncy bed cover!

A small cottage in Torridon with a 16 month old toddler, charming but an awful traveller (still is). Cottage leaked; no decent facilities for washing selves, child or nappies - this was in the days before disposable nappies except for the ones on a roll that gave him nappy rash. Weather was wet and predictably there were midges in clouds. We lasted about a week and then retreated to sister's house in Dundee. Never had I been so glad of hot running water.

Oh, and I was four months pregnant - this was in 1972 - and was plagued by heartburn.

Mmm- so hard to choose but I think it was a youth hostel in the Lake District. DH (but not H then - in the first flush as it were) had staff working up there and suggested a weekend, and a check on the staff. Left S Wales after work, long drive and eventually located our destination sometime after 9pm. I had fondly imagined he had booked a basic double room for us. Mais non! There were 2 dormitories. Him in one with the chaps and me in the other with an unknown female, in bunks. Damp mattresses, musty pillows and scratchy blankets (presumably you were expected to bring luxuries like sheets and pillowcases.) Most of the team were asleep as they had to catch an early tide to do an oceanographic survey. So i had to creep into this toxic bunk, without waking up unknown female. Who of course got up to go surveying in the small hours, just as I had managed to get off to sleep.
The second night, dear reader, I booked us into a nice b and b.

The Clifton Hotel in Folkestone (it's been refurbished now) in the 70s. My fiancee and I booked in for a fortnight because they claimed to be luxurious, had a lift, sea-view rooms, and the chef produced nouvelle cuisine food.

As we approached the hotel, we noticed that the glass panelled front entrance had about 10 broken panes of glass, reception turned out to be non-existent, we got stuck in the ancient lift, and the leg fell off the bed when we put the suitcases on it. The shower didn't work, there was no hot water, and the sea view was hidden behind the boarded up bedroom window!

Undeterred, we went down to dinner in the almost empty dining room. I ordered my nouvelle cuisine main meal, sardine provencale (having just been in Cannes, I fancied renewing my enjoyment of those lovely sardines cooked fresh on the terrace overlooking the Med). One tomato-coloured sardine out of a little tin arrived, resting on one small leaf from a little gem!

We walked back upstairs, packed our bags and rooted out the manager who was hiding in an office behind the empty reception desk. We told him to stick his hotel where the sun don't shine and drove to Winchelsea, where we stayed in the fabulous village pub and gorged ourselves on rib of beef and a full Sunday roast the next day. I shudder at the thought of nouvelle cuisine now - it always takes me back!

Did I say Fiancee? Meant fiance!

A hotel in Moscow many years ago. When I pulled the curtains they fell off into my hands as the paper clips holding them up flew through the air. The wash basin didn't have a plug and the one provided on the key ring didn't fit. I pulled the plug of my hair dryer out of the socket on the wall and the socket was so fed up with the wall it wanted to come back with us. The food was cold and fatty. The outside looked like Colditz and the courtyard was overgrown. Why did we stay? It was a conference hotel and DH was a guest speaker!!! That said all the guests were taken out to the ballet but the coach left without us - and DH, as I say, was the 'celebrity' for the occasion!!! - and so we had to find our own way back to this place which was in the suburbs and only I knew a few words of Russian - hallo, goodbye, please, thank you, left and right. Luckily we remembered the Intourist hotel we'd stayed in some years before and thankfully it was where we'd left it. DH had fortuitously written down the name of our hotel and the Receptionist popped us into a taxi. The driver didn't speak English and it got really scary when we were taken down unlit country roads but to his credit he got us back. An absolute nightmare.

I think that's the worst one yet, goldengirl!

Saunton Sands Hotel - the worst stay of our lives, the worst service and the worst management.

Didn't you go youth hostelling when you were young, jess? One always had to take a sheet sleeping bag, which objects had integral pillow pockets.

Sheets, pillowcases, and duvets with fresh covers now provided at most YH.

Ah. Those were the days!

you weren't allowed to arrive by car either. How things have changed!

A damp gite in St Jean de Luz. I remember thinking at the time, I've had enough of French holiday homes having gone to France for about four successive years when the children were young we made the decision to go to America the following year and stay in some friends really nice apartment. I also remember being very annoyed when renting a holiday cottage in Devon where the owners had left all their food in the cupboards and to make matters worse left a note asking us not to touch any of it. If you are renting out your holiday home to friends and family at a knock down rent then fine, but they weren't we were paying top wack through an agent and in my opinion they should have cleared their cupboards. To make matters worse the house hadn't been cleaned properly.

No I did not Bags and I was not warned where we would be staying either!

We used Youth Hostels in the UK all the time when our children were young. Brilliant. I made our own sheet sleeping bags out of cotton sheets. There were always nice people around and the kids always had someone to play with. Our favourites were Huntstanton, Hartington and Boggle Hole.

Years ago we took the family to a cottage in mid-Wales - it was grim and we dodged the insects (I did not investigate!) skittering across the floor on the dark.

Then we took all the family and lots of other teenage hangers-on to another cottage on the Welsh coast - the beds were so disgusting that even the teenagers would not sleep in them but chose the floor! We decamped to a couple of caravans that we managed to find free on a nearby site. The person who had rented us this cottage is a local here and I still cannot look her in the eye! She advertised in the local parish mag - I truly do not know how she had the nerve. It was all a bit traumatic, as I was recovering from a hysterectomy at the time.

And another time when OH and I were first married we rented a caravan in the country which was unbelievably damp with mould dripping off the walls and in teh bed/mattress. We left early, and I vividly remember that we debated long and hard what to do with the contents of the bucket toilet and decided (naughty us!) to fling it over the nearest hedge on the grounds that the cows were crapping merrily there and no-one would ever know.....or would they? .....we had not banked on the bits of bright blue toilet paper that decorated the hedge after we had done the deed!

We had a week in a holiday cottage in Ludlow (beautiful town, wonderful countryside, can't fault it) last year. Rented through an agency, it was in a perfect location down a little side passage, but one of those places that, the minute you open the door, your heart sinks. Obviously left to the owners by the deceased elderly relative, it didn't look as if it had been altered since that day. Very cramped, the ground floor was smaller than our kitchen but crammed with old heavy furniture. The kitchen was unsafe, cooker side by side with the ancient sink, cupboards full of bits and bobs of old chipped china. Worst still, the bedroom on the first floor had an old bed with a very old Dunlopillo mattress; the first night we used it, we both rolled into the middle, so after this we slept in separate bedrooms - how romantic! The shower room was cramped, old and dirty and the loo located at the top of a narrow flight of stairs - you sat on the toilet and pulled the double doors towards you.
To cap it all, there was no signal on the ancient television, and the next door neighbour was a music teacher, so any time spent in the cottage was accompanied by tuneless, repetitive piano music.
We did complain to the agency, but there was no feedback and I see it is still being advertised on their website. Wasn't a bargan, either! Luckily we loved the town of Ludlow and the beautiful area around it, so were able to get out and have a good time away from that horrible cottage.