UBC October 2025 - Carlisle: Our very own Fawlty Towers Experience

Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash

From Liverpool we drove north and spent the night in a town called Carlisle, just about 12 miles from the Scottish border.

This is where we had our first “Fawlty Towers Experience”, as we now call it.

Are you familiar with Monty Python? Then you might enjoy Fawlty Towers; a British sitcom about an uptight, rude, and perpetually exasperated hotel owner, played by John Cleese, who constantly tries (and fails) to maintain order among difficult guests, clueless staff, and his sharp-tongued wife.

I’m not a fan, but my husband insists it’s funny. Either way, let me tell you about our own experience, and you can decide whether

a) you can find the fun in it, or
b) our story has parallels to the Fawlty Towers mentality.

In the booking confirmation, the hotel informed us:

“We have our own car park located at the rear of the hotel. Please use the postcode CA3 8HB to access this.”

What do you make of that? Nowhere does it say you can’t get to the hotel if you use its actual address, “English Street” (no house number). Entering that led us straight to bollards marking the start of the pedestrian zone. So my husband stayed in the car while Colin and I made our way to the reception of what might once have been a time-honored hotel.

Two ladies were sitting there. One rummaging through papers, the other twiddling her thumbs. Neither looked up, not when we approached, not when we said “good evening.”

We stood there for about half a minute before the paper lady muttered, “Hold on a second.” Another thirty seconds went by while she stapled a receipt to a document and found the right drawer for it. It was painful to watch.

When she finally spoke, I could barely understand her, partly due to a few missing teeth and partly because of a very thick accent.

We asked how to get to the parking area.

“You have to enter Blackfriars Street. You’ll see Marks & Spencer, and there’s a pedestrian zone,” she said.

I showed her the email and mentioned it would be nice if guests were told how to get to the hotel in the first place. She just shrugged.

“If you’re having trouble, call this number,” she added, scribbling the hotel’s phone number on the back of a used piece of paper.

The address took us on a ten-minute drive through a maze of one-way streets, roundabouts, and traffic lights. We ended up behind Marks & Spencer, a place we had already passed once before, where a huge truck was parked in the middle of the narrow, one-way street.

We spotted a sign for “Blackfriars Street Car Park.” Was that it? It turned out to be a public parking garage, but we had no better option, so we parked there. Payment was by coins or app, but we had no reception underground. My husband took a photo of the payment instructions before we dragged our suitcases past the M&S truck, in the rain, toward a locked metal gate with the hotel name on it.

“Good thing we didn’t manage to pay,” he said when he returned from fetching the car.

That’s when I remembered the “code” mentioned in the email. There had to be some device where we could enter it, right? CA3 8HB it was.

There was something on the wall next to the gate, but it looked like a prop, not a working keypad. Next to it was a switch. I pressed it. Nothing.

A car pulled up, and we waited to see what would happen. The driver seemed to make a call. Spotting us with our bags in the rain, she lowered her window and said hello.

It was her second night here, and she explained that to open the gate, you had to call reception and pray that either the thumb-twiddling lady or the paper-pushing lady would move their butt to the door and open it manually.

Which, indeed, happened - after about five minutes. It’s not like the reception was crowded.

When we finally checked in, the paper lady didn’t seem to recognize us, despite my half-hearted “Yay, we made it!” She remained unmoved.

She handed us a key. A real, heavy, old-fashioned metal key.

Usually, you get an envelope with keycards, breakfast times, and the Wi-Fi password. Colin, always desperate for internet, asked for it.
“There’s no password,” she said flatly.

Of course, she failed to mention that there’s also no reception in the upper-floor rooms of this relic of a building, only on the ground floor.

Speaking of upper floors.. Of course there was no elevator. Just worn, carpeted stair treads.

In the room, we found a single power outlet. One. That’s not ideal when three people want to charge their devices, even with a multi-plug and an adapter.

We were starving, so we decided to try the hotel restaurant. I ordered an asparagus and cheddar pie.

It took a while to arrive, but it looked nicer than expected, so my spirits lifted.

The good vibes didn’t last long. The miniature pie was basically half-raw onion with some cheese and an asparagus garnish.

Are they kidding me?

I don’t tolerate onions well, and honestly, when I order an asparagus and cheese pie, I don’t expect onions to be the main ingredient.

As always in these places, the staff avoided asking whether everything was okay. When the table was cleared, I managed to say I wasn’t amused. “Sorry,” the waitress shrugged and vanished.

Despite the rain, we decided we deserved dessert and found a place that was still open for another half-hour and served “puds.” (That’s short for “puddings,” the British term for desserts in general.)

We were seated near the bar, since that’s where we had to order. Colin volunteered but returned quickly. “I need a credit card, and there’s no coffee,” he said.

Fair enough for the card. But no coffee? I was looking right at the coffee machine.

“The bartender said they stop serving coffee after a certain hour, and we’re past that time.”

Wow. There’s a coffee machine, a customer (hubby, I’d never order coffee at a place like this), and still half an hour till closing, and they refuse to serve it?

Having worked for Starbucks, I know the trick of cleaning machines early to clock out on time. Fair enough if someone shows up two minutes before closing, but thirty?

So there we were, on a rainy evening in northern England, rethinking our decisions.

And it gets worse: back home, we received a notice from the rental car company. A fine for the five minutes we left our car at the public car park. What the heck? Now we’ll have to deal with that from afar.

Have you ever stayed at a place so absurd it could’ve been straight out of a sitcom?