What a nice chap Prince Charles is. That's not a comment I ever expected to see myself, an ardent anti-royalist, writing, but booking into that £25 B&B in the Lake District to show his support for the UK travel industry, after foot and mouth and all the rest, was a great act of self-sacrifice.
You see, you wouldn't get me into a British B&B even if you paid me. I'm happy to stay with Cubans in their own homes with dodgy plumbing for £15 a night, but in a First World country where many a B&B charges at least double or even 10 times that (depending where you go) you expect better.
The last time I drove up to Barnard Castle and stayed in a B&B was one of the bleakest experiences ever. The room stank of cigarette smoke and there was something pitiful about the Sainsbury's bag lining the bin.
An acquaintance has boycotted B&Bs since the experience two years ago when her eczema went into high drive after she slept in nylon sheets (oh why, oh why?). And another felt like she was staying in a prison when the landlord was pacing up and down the corridor waiting for her to arrive back after the 10pm curfew (why didn't he just issue her with her own key?).
I keep wanting to give B&Bs a second chance and I try really hard to forget the damage done by a B&B on the Isle of Mull when I was seven years old. It was August and poured with rain for the whole fortnight. The landlady insisted that guests stayed out of the house from 9am till 6pm which is quite a challenge when it's pouring with rain and there are four damp people cooped up in a VW Beetle going around in circles looking for entertainment in the mist.
Even Tourism Minister Kim Howells says he's had bad experiences and insists quality will be key to the future success of the UK travel industry.
What really annoys me - and many others - is that if you want a quality holiday in the UK you have to pay through the nose for it. I did stay in a a very nice B&B in London once but it cost more than £200 a night; there's another good one in Edinburgh which sounds nice, but it's more than £100.
I know I've got to get over this and if I were in therapy I would no doubt be told to seek 'closure' by going to a good B&B to prove they're not all bad. We know that there are excellent B&Bs out there somewhere, but the best of the less expensive ones usually don't have the marketing budgets to get themselves more widely known. Instead their names are passed secretively on scraps of paper between good friends after dinner parties.
So if you know of any great B&Bs under £100 a night that provide cotton sheets, give you your own key and don't chuck you out all day long, please write and let me know. Then we can shout about them loudly to the rest of the world, here in Escape.
