Ascot Hotel

The Ascot is a three-star hotel on Empire Terrace, just off the Douglas seafront. It has kept the bones of its Victorian building and put a much louder modern interior inside them.

From the pavement you get black and white half-timbering above red brick, bay windows climbing four storeys and an awning over the door at street level. Inside, two arched glass screens open into a tiled reception with the hotel name laid into the floor. Upper floors are reached by lift as well as stairs.

The bar and the dining rooms

The public rooms are where this hotel spends its personality. There is a bar and restaurant under a dropped ceiling washed in orange and red light, high-backed white chairs at wooden tables, and a second, quieter dining room in brick and grey with red napkins at every place. It is a proper sit-down operation rather than a coffee machine in a corner.

Up in the bedrooms

The rooms are traditional in a way the bar is not: cream walls, dark wood headboards, a red or gold runner across white bedding, heavy curtains at tall windows. Doubles, twins and family rooms are all in the mix, the family rooms taking a double and two singles in one space. Each has a private bathroom, a desk and a kettle. Bathrooms vary: a corner bath with the shower over it in one, a glazed cubicle in another.

Empire Terrace and the bay

The beach and the sweep of the promenade are a short walk from the door, near enough for the sea air and far enough back that the traffic stays on the main road. Everything else the capital holds sits inside Douglas itself, and the coast road towards Laxey begins at the northern end of the bay.

Who books in here

People working on the island who want a bar and a kitchen under the same roof, families who would rather share one room than book two, and anyone for whom a lift matters.