Perfect for a car free break, this endearingly eccentric hotel never lets you forget you are in the middle of the New Forest
It’s a shame the last word my husband utters during our stay at Cottage Lodge Hotel in Brockenhurst is an expletive – as we head out of the hotel’s cheery yellow front door to go home, he cracks his head on the rather low lintel – because until now our exclamations have generally been oohs and aahs of delight.
Dynamic owner Christina Simons is busy turning what had been a chintzy six-room B&B into a small environment-friendly hotel, adding nine rooms and features such as triple insulation, flooring of bamboo and jute, solar panels, low-flow loos and LED lighting. She has chucked out the chintz and imbued the place with a slightly eccentric and definitely arboreal character. “Well we are in the middle of a forest,” she says.
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