Camden Lock Hotel

I'm a seasoned budget traveller, so i research well for a decent and cheap place.

When it comes to London, you're not going to get much better than this for such a low price.

I paid about £60/night (which is cheap in London), and stayed in room 204.

Big room, big bathroom. both clean.

it does face the busy pub across the street, but as with most pubs, it winds down at midnight and is quiet. if you're an early sleeper, this is not for you.

Many free wifi accesspoints to tap into, but my room also had a network cable.

TV with 5 basic channels.

breakfast was served, but I didn't have it when Camden high street is outside you're front door.

there is no lift...so you're hiking up stairs if u have a lot of luggage.

but if you're looking for a place to crash, easy access to central london...this is perfect

This was the first time i had visited Camden, so i wanted somewhere not only central but also reasonably priced. A quick search on google came up with the Camden Lock Hotel, so i booked it via the hotel's own website. In hindsight i could have probably found it cheaper elsewhere but i'll come to that later.

The hotel itself was functional, with everything that needed to be there, but not a lot else. There was a small seating area near the reception desk which also doubled up as the location for breakfast in the mornings, but no seperate bar. Check in was very straight forward, and the member of staff who served us was friendly and helpful.

The rooms were basic but comfortable, although slightly on the small side. There was a TV, a desk and chair, two beds, tea making set, and nothing else. No fridge, safe, or sofa, for example, so not really any good for relaxing. As we were only there for one night it wasn't much of a problem, but i probably wouldn't consider staying there for more than a couple of nights.

The bathroom was a reasonable size, although our shower didn't get anywhere near the heat we set it too. Even with the dial at 50c it was nothing more than luke warm. Not a major problem and something that could hopefully be fixed quickly, it was only a small annoyance to us because of our short stay.

The inclusive breakfast was one of the best parts of our stay. It was advertised as continental but it had nearly all the bits and pieces to make a cooked breakfast, as well as cereals, and toast. And it looked as if you could eat as much as you want, as it was all self service.

There weren't any negatives to our stay, and the only area where the hotel loses marks are in what i see as slightly poor value for money. The cost of the room was £79 per night, and whilst i appreciate that is good value for a centrally located hotel, i still expected a bit more in the way of facilities both in the room and the hotel as a whole. Also a bit of decoration to give the hotel a bit of character wouldn't go amiss.

Overall, i would probably stay there again but mainly for the location, and i would probably recommend it to friends and family, but not whole heartedly.

It's pretty hard to find a good value hotel in London for £79, so we were delighted to find one which was.

Primarily we chose this hotel because we were seeing 'a-ha' at the Roundhouse opposite. The hotel is so near that you can practically see your room from the venue!

The room was a good size, with a flat-screen digital TV with Freeview (I've not seen this in more expensive hotels), a good shower, and a comfy bed. The only disadvantage to the room we had was that it was dead opposite a pub, which can get noisy.

The area is "lively". There's a good kebab takeaway a few doors down and a decent pub across the road. The hotel is a very short walking distance from Chalk Farm Hotel Underground Station and is on a main bus route into Central London.

We didn't have breakfast as we woke up too late, but this didn't matter as nearby Camden Market is highly recommended where you can get good food from almost every corner of the globe.

One thing to watch is that there's a sneaky £3.50 charge if you want to pay by credit card. We also didn't see a lift, so if you're carrying heavy bags you might want to ask for a ground floor room. Other than that, the staff and hotel were excellent.