A nosey at the new Albion Hotel in Freshwater Bay

The Albion Hotel re-opened in 2024 after years of looking a bit unappealing

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We spend a lot of time in Freshwater Bay, which is one of my top five Isle of Wight beaches (suspect to change based on weather, tides and whether the children behaved on the last outing).

For many years we've walked past The Albion and felt it was a real gem that was being underused. It was open but reviews languished around 3.5/5. Customers said it was dated. The bar at the front looked unappealing and was never somewhere we went for a coffee whilst on the beach. I don't ever recall anyone being in there. I'm not even sure that it was open to non-guests a lot of the time. 

​The Albion came on the market, but I was merely a couple of million pounds short of the asking price.

New owners

Thankfully, someone else saw the potential and spent about 18 months and £6m giving it a major refurb (the owners also have links to Sentry Mead in Totland and to Totland Pier).

I've not stayed at The Albion but we were given a tour recently and we were impressed. 

The children came with us, which was a high risk move. I told the younger one to treat it like a school trip and ask questions, whilst also telling them that if they argued or embarrassed us then they wouldn't be getting another ice cream until they were 35 years old. ​

Downstairs at The Albion

I am not an expert on décor. I can't tell you about Instagram trends or shades of Farrow and Ball modern emulsion.

However, I can tell that I like the subtle décor and parquet flooring at the Albion and can tell you how it has changed.

The bar at the front has shrunk a little and is now The Cabin. The space has been gobbled up by two rather nice rooms. One is called The Library and is basically a guest lounge, with a great view. There's also a little flap you can lift up to see the oldest remaining part of the original Albion. 

Next door is the Music Room, which is a sort of conference or meeting room with a music theme and some Pink Floyd memorabilia on the wall.

I am terrible in meetings and spend most of the time either staring out the window or eating the communal packet of custard creams that have been provocatively placed on the table. If I attended meetings at The Albion I would eat less custard creams and spend more time staring at the view. People would occasionally ask me questions and I would look blank and then bluster my way through it by saying things like 'reach out', 'Q3' and 'roadmap'.

The dining area at The Albion is now called The Rock and is open to guests and non-guests. It has space for 100-120 people, which is pretty big by Isle of Wight standards. That number would require good weather as many of the seats are outside. 

We haven't eaten dinner there yet but we have eaten breakfast on a separate occasion to the tour. ​

Part of the old bar at the Albion is now the Guest Library

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A breakfast diversion ​

We ate breakfast at the Albion about a week before our tour. It cost us £25, which is probably the most expensive breakfast I've ever eaten (I'm the sort of person who finds a discount voucher for every outing). However, I've concluded it was actually good value and I will be back for a second sitting when we get a chance.

Here's my thinking.

If you eat out in the evening at a posh restaurant with a sea view on the Isle of Wight then you will often pay £20-£25 for a main course.

With the breakfast menu at The Albion, I managed to work my way through a four course meal with unlimited filter coffee for the same price.

My starter was a bowl of fruit, which was interesting stuff like fresh pineapple, watermelon and apricots rather than a tin of that fruit cocktail stuff with slimy seconds that some hotels serve in metal bowls.

My second course was yoghurt and granola. I could have added Coco Pops but I was trying to look posh whilst also not filling up before the main event. 

The main course was a full English breakfast with bacon, eggs and so on. This was very nicely done. There were various other options for the main course, but I decided to go for the largest plate possible.

I then had a filter coffee and managed to spill about 20% of it whilst figuring out how to use the milk jug.

Finally, for my newly invented course of a 'breakfast dessert' I had bread and cheese with Danish pastries. 

Mrs Guru may have said "I can't take you anywhere" a couple of times but I was satisfied that I had made the most of the situation. ​

The Rock has enough seating for about 100-120 covers

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Back to the tour

After a look in The Cabin and The Rock, we wandered past the two accessible rooms for people in wheelchairs. These have wet rooms and there's also a lift for wheelchair users in case  they need to get upstairs (we will be adding this to our guide to accessible accommodation).

We then went upstairs and had a look at one of the rooms on the terrace on top of the restaurant. This operates as one giant shared terrace rather than separate sections and is big enough for a game of five-a-side football (although the restaurant guests below might not appreciate that).

This is the terrace at The Albion. We visited on a grey morning, but you get the idea

The bathroom in the first bedroom we looked round (I'm not sure why I only photographed bathrooms)

The advantage of this is that you could potentially book all of that floor and have the terrace for yourself and your friends (budget allowing). It would certainly make a good wedding venue as long as Uncle Geoffrey didn't ruin it by sunbathing bare-chested whilst you said your vows. 

Child two piped up at this point with her first (slightly random) question.

​She wanted to know why the beds were so high.

​Our guide generously commented that this was a "good question" and explained that this was due to the deep mattresses. I was relieved to see that child two nodded and accepted this answer.

We were then shown a second room, which was the Victoria Room. This is one of the poshest and biggest rooms at The Albion. The bathroom alone was bigger than some hotel rooms I've stayed in. ​

This photo shows about a third of the bathroom in the Victoria room

Child two then piped up again with her second question. 

"Where do babies..."

My heartrate increased. Surely my darling daughter wasn't going to ask our tour guide about the birds and the bees? What would be the relevance on a tour of a posh coastal hotel? Perhaps she had taken my suggestion to ask questions very seriously and was thinking of everything she wanted to know about the world.

Thankfully she continued with a more relevant question. 

"Where do babies...and children play and what can they do when they stay here?"

Our host obliged with a few suggestions of West Wight days out, games at the hotel and smoothies delivered to your door. 

Our guide also gave us a few more details that may be of interest. There are about 40 rooms now at The Albion. They aren't all finished but they plan to close for a few weeks in winter so they can finish them off without guests having to listen to power tools. 

I also asked about the old hotel's swimming pool. From what I could gather, it is unlikely to return as a pool but there are various plans to use the space for something else useful.

We had made it to the end of the tour and neither child had embarrassed us. We rewarded them later in the day with a strawberry milkshake from Dimbola. 

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