We arrived at the hostel couple of hours earlier than expected (about 4pm) to find the owner in her nightdress. This should have been our first clue that it was impossible to sleep at night. She seemed somewhat put out that we didn’t arrive at the exact time we anticipated.

Our room was small – one set of bunk beds but it seemed o.k – we stay in lots of hostels so basic suits us. You have to put 50p in to use the shower and you don’t get a lot of time – I only have short hair but I had to wash my conditioner off in the sink.

We went to bed that night and were awoken at 4am by a football team coming back drunk! The walls are very thin and the fire doors slam very noisily. Why the owner accepted a whole football team in a hostel that has family rooms I don’t know?! The noise continued for well over an hour and it was impossible to sleep.

Once the noise subsided at about 5:30am, we were kept awake by sun streaming in through the window (which has no curtains – it’s frosted and leads into another room) and by extremely uncomfortable mattresses.

In the morning we decided we were leaving but we spoke to the owner who persuaded us to stay. She explained that the football team were leaving and promised to swap one of the mattresses for a better one. We agreed to try one more night (we were booked in for four in total).

That night we went to bed early (tired from the night before) and were awoke at gone 11pm by the owner asking us to pay for our room!!! As we had just been woken up and weren’t thinking straight, we paid for all four nights. Maybe she was worried that we would leave without paying but we would never have done this – we would have paid for the nights we stayed. When we arrived we hadn’t been to a cash machine and then once we had visited a machine we didn’t see her. Also, we were supposed to be trying one more night before deciding whether it was acceptable.

Anyway after having been woken at 11pm with a demand for money we went back to bed and were awoken again at 3am by drunken people returning from a night out. We don’t have a problem with people enjoying themselves but the hostel is very compact, the walls are thin and the doors slam shut so noise by some guests really affects others.

The following morning we decided that staying there was not going to make for a good holiday. We sat down with the hostel owner and explained our concerns. We asked for a refund of the two nights we had not stayed but there was no negotiation on her part. She stated that we would have to request this via hostelbookers and lied about the hostel being part of a bigger company and the money being ‘sent to the bank’. We requested a receipt for the money paid but she said this would take some time to organise and she would post it to us – this was three weeks ago – nothing has been received.

Hostelbookers stated that the contract was between us and the hostel and so weren’t able to get involved our complaint. I have written to the owner requesting a refund of the nights we didn’t stay and given her time to respond and she has ignored my letter.

I would not advise anyone to stay here!