Mereside

Mereside is a four-star guest house at 1 Empire Terrace, a quiet residential row set back from the Douglas seafront. It is run by MANPROP Ltd, which also has Glen Mona and Rosslyn in the town.

One thing to clear up. The polished timber bar with its row of optics is the company's HQ Bar, shared across those sister houses, not a sitting room inside Mereside. What Mereside gives you is a private room with its own bathroom, a short walk up from Douglas Beach.

The look of the rooms

Decoration is warm and hotel-like rather than chintzy: cream walls, deep buttoned leather headboards in chocolate and navy, brown throws folded across white cotton. Several rooms sit up under the eaves with sloping ceilings, and one keeps a bare brick chimney breast as a feature, a writing desk beside it. Bathrooms are modern, with glass shower enclosures, a band of mosaic tile and heated towel rails. Every room has a flat-screen television, a kettle, a wardrobe and a seating area.

Doubles, twins and the executive

Rooms are booked one at a time: a double, a twin with two single beds, and a larger executive double that adds a sofa bed and a view. The brightest has a wide bay window with a dressing table built into it, looking over the rooftops towards the bay. Linen, towels, toiletries and a hairdryer come with every room.

Down to the beach

Douglas Beach is a short walk away, and from the promenade the shops, restaurants and ferry terminal of Douglas follow one after another. Laxey Beach sits further up the coast for a day out of the capital.

Who it suits

A well-kept, unfussy base for a couple or a pair of friends over for a few days of Manx sightseeing, who would rather have a quiet street to come back to than the scale of a promenade hotel.