On Sunday night I stayed at the Furness Railway Hotel at Barrow -in-Furness.
It is a Wetherspoons hotel, but their hotels are a lot more upmarket than their pubs.
It may be a budget chain (about 50 hotels), for which I paid £58.50, but it has a lot of quality about it. It feels upmarket. You get biscuits, hot chocolate and two bottles of water on the hospitality tray as well as the usual tea and coffee.
Oh and free tea and coffee refills in the pub.
The soundproofing from the pub below is excellent.
Straight outside are Chinese and Indian restaurants, also Barrow is known for its quality and cheap fish and chip shops! Even on a Sunday night lots of choice of restaurants in the town.
As usual at Wetherspoons there is a lot of information on the walls of the pub about the town's past (including warship, submarine and airship building). The town still builds nuclear submarines.
The building was a department store originally.
Barrow is well placed on the King Charles coastal path, and an hour by train from St Bees for the C2C, as well as the X7 bus up the coast, change at Egremont for St Bees.
It is also just over an hour from Windermere by fairly frequent direct bus, #6. The first one out is at 5am, and the last back at 11pm, seven days a week.
There is also the nature reserves (plural) and bird spotting on Walney Island.
Barrow also has direct trains from Manchester Airport and is under 4 hours from London hourly, change at Lancaster.
All Wetherspoons hotels can only be booked direct through their own website.
I could have got the Travelodge for £35, but the difference is chalk and cheese.
For me it was merely a means to an end to catch an 0550 train to London next morning, but I have wanted an excuse to stay there since it opened.