The Island & Fairfield

The Island and the Fairfield are two guest houses run as a pair, a few doors apart on Empress Drive in Douglas. Green nameboards hang above both entrances, and whichever one you are booked into, the same people look after you.

Both are tall red-brick Victorians, three storeys of white bay windows with stone balustrades over the doorway and a bracket sign out over the pavement. Guests leave the car at the kerb outside. The front door opens into a carpeted hall, and from there it is stairs only to the upper floors.

Breakfast and the ground floor

Breakfast is the reason to choose a house like this over a self-catering flat. What arrives is the full traditional plate: bacon and sausage, a fried egg, hash brown, grilled tomato and beans. Upstairs, each room has a kettle, a flat-screen television with a DVD player, and a desk with shelving above it for a laptop or the next day’s map.

Rooms across the two houses

Rooms are doubles and twins, decorated one at a time rather than to a scheme: a soft green wall behind one bed, red cushions on white linen in another, dark wood and a dressing-table mirror in a third. Every room has a private bathroom, most with a glazed shower cubicle, and each comes with a wardrobe, a clothes rack and a socket within reach of the bed. Linen and towels are supplied.

Down on the seafront

Empress Drive sits just back from the water, so the beach and the promenade are a short walk from the door. Douglas is the island’s capital, which puts the shops, the restaurants and the transport links in the same town rather than a drive away.

The kind of stay this is

A plain seaside guest house rather than a boutique one. It works for couples on a long weekend, two friends sharing a twin, and anyone travelling without a car who would rather be on the front than out on a ring road.