Mad Hatter Hosts Ric & Maggie with Best Loved's Stuart Honey

I was going to have to investigate Niton’s ‘The Enchanted Manor’ and discover just why TripAdvisor rated it Number One amongst the Island’s B&Bs. Well, I have.And I have, because owners and hosts extraordinary, Ric and Maggie, were kind enough to invite me, today, to a Mad Hatter’s Afternoon Tea Party at their fairyland palace. Where do I start?

The name. The name kind of gave me the chilly willies. But I was wrong. The name is utterly and totally apt. The rating? Get this out of the way. The Enchanted Manor many provide beds…four-posters with beautiful caramel hangings…and it may serve breakfast…in a most glamorous and pleasing verandah…but it is quite simply not what you and I understand as a ‘B&B’. Know what I mean? TripAdvisor has got to stop comparing such as this with Mary’s 20 quid a night tidy sleepover.

The Enchanted Manor is, quite simply an ‘event’. It is a deliciously over-the-top Las Vegas fairyland, glittering with more special effects than I have ever seen. Nymphs in the garden, sylphs in the bedroom…tulle and glitter simply everywhere! Europeans…save the fare to the US of A…anything and everything Vegas can offer you is (I imagine, for I’ve never been to Vegas) right here!

All right, I will admit, I’m not a newly-wed (I live in hope) and I won’t be having anymore ‘anniversaries’, and I hugely love my beautiful all-white ‘monastic’ room up on the Downs. So The Enchanted Manor is never going to be my Wightish ‘home’. But if you want a Fairytale weekend, a few days in Wonderland, with or without Alice, but with every seen-on-TV luxury you can think of, Ric and Maggie will, I am sure, make you as happy as all those five-star contented customers who have made them Number One B&B (what!?) on the imponderable Trip Advisor.

Kurt Gänzl

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