Speyside Inn Review (and a bit about Speyside restaurants!)

8 room Inn and dive centre in Speyside (listing)
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Allan + Maria

Speyside Inn Review (and a bit about Speyside restaurants!)

Post by Allan + Maria »

As promised, here is our review of the Speyside Inn in Speyside following our 5 nights there end March/beginning April. We paid US$85 per night for a double room including breakfast and tax (the full rate for this time of year is US$100 but they are suffering from the current situation and are only half full). We considered this to be good value for money. The hotel has around 8 rooms, most of which are in the main building and 2 in the attached "tower" which is a 2 storey structure. If we recall their website correctly, it also has a couple of self-catering units behind. All rooms have balconies and sea view and we stayed in the lower room of the tower (the upper tower room is slightly dearer and has a larger double bed I think - they advertise it as being suitable for honeymooners!). Accommodation was comfortable and spacious, though not luxurious. The bathroom fittings looked rather aged, but worked perfectly - it was great to have a proper hot shower with pressure after lack of both at Inn on the Bay the previous 5 nights!). The floors are tiled so nice and cool and there were a couple of chairs to sit out on the balcony. The room wasn't air conditioned but had a ceiling fan and standing fan by the bed. Cynthia, the manager when we were there, was very helpful with providing local information, though unfortunately her last day was our last day! The chef was also very friendly and went on a trip to Little Tobago with another couple of their guests!

Our main problem with the room was the fact that it was rather open to the elements! Along the top of each wall was a stencil type pattern cut through which looked nice but which at night let the mosquitoes have full access to our brown/red bodies! Every morning we compared bite locations - they always managed to find a bit we had failed to "mosiguard" against! However, we have a feeling this stencil design only applied to the tower rooms rather than those in the main building.

Food was excellent. There was a breakfast menu to choose from which included eggs in any style you wanted, bacon and sausage, omlettes with cheese/tomato, french toast or pancakes, and also cereal. We also automatically got given fresh fruit and fruit juice, a basket of homemade bread toasted, and homemade cake. It kept us going through lunch some days! They also do dinner there which is open to the public, and this is served on the open air terrace at the front. The chef is excellent and we ate one dinner there which was very enjoyable. It was good to have a 3 course menu to choose from with 2 or 3 options for each course and an idea of what style dish to expect, unlike the local restaurants in Speyside where you are just asked if you want "fish, chicken, shrimp?" and are looked at blankly if you ask how it will be cooked! The only problem we found was that they didn't serve dinner 2 of the 5 nights we were there - not sure of the reasons. Definitely worth a meal there though even if you aren't staying. The day's menu is posted on a board at the end of the hotel's drive in the afternoon and they like to know you are planning to eat there a few hours in advance if possible.

Other local eating options which we tried out are the renowned Jemma's Treehouse (less than 100yds down the road), Redmans (another treehouse just before Jemma's with v similar food but empty when we went for lunch) and Birdwatchers Bar & Restaurant (just the other side of Jemma's - same food again!). We also ate in the Seacrest Bar & Restaurant further back along the main road in Speyside, towards the football pitch end, the pub part of which seemed to be a popular haunt of locals, and again, the food was fine. All the above serve "fish, chicken, shrimp" with the traditional macroni pie, potato bake, calalloo, peas, rice and the meals are generally not that cheap, even compared to the hotels. Lastly, we tried the restaurant in Blue Waters Inn (as we fancied another proper menu to eat from!) and had a nice enough meal there, though perhaps a bit bland. Nice black forest gateaux dessert though! We also had a lunch in the bar there and really enjoyed flying fish and fries (the local restaurants looked at us blankly when we asked for fries, saying they just had "potato"!).

Afraid we've gone on a bit but hope the above is useful - we do recommend Speyside Inn, especially for its meals, and it's in a good spot for trips into the rainforest and out to the reef/islands, especially if your budget can't stretch to the Blue Waters Inn, and unlike the Blue Waters Inn, you can easily walk to the local eateries.

Maria & Allan (back in Sussex with rapidly fading tans!)
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