Woodhall Spa

Let's get one thing straight.  I'm a Travelodge fan.  Or failing that Days Inn or Premier Inn.  Whatever - my first search for accommodation is at the budget end of the scale. However, I rather enjoy staying in a "good" hotel.  I like having my meals cooked and my room serviced.  I like wandering down to the bar for a sherry or the lounge for morning coffee.  It's just that my bank balance doesn't have quite the same tastes as I do.

But many rather nice hotels have very good deals in February.  The meals are still a bit on the pricey side but the accommodation is a bargain.  It gives me something to look forward to in the dullest months of the year too!

Prototype bouncing bomb

So this week I have had a few days at Woodhall Spa.  This is a lovely village in the depths of Lincolnshire.  It first became popular in the Victorian period when "beneficial" waters were found by accident when coal was being sought.  Railways, hotels and golf courses were built over the years and  by the Edwardian period Woodhall Spa was a very fashionable place.   Baroness Von Eckhardstein decided to build a holiday home there in her "pet wood" so the house became Petwood.  There she entertained royalty, stars of stage and screen, sportsmen and women and the great and good of her day.

Woodhall Spa again became famous in the Second World War when two of its large hotels were requisitioned as messes for officers from the nearby airfields.  Most famously the Petwood housed officers of 617 squadron as they trained for the Dambuster raids.  

Woodhall is famous locally for the Kinema in the Woods, the last cinema in England to use back projection.  There's still an organ played during the interval of the film and an usherette still sells ice creams in the auditorium.  Sadly, I didn't get to the Kinema this visit.