Spread your wings into Sussex

When I read that The Spread Eagle was a 15th century hostelry with antique furniture I was rather alarmed. Apparently, Elizabeth I stayed there, as did Guy Fawkes and Goering. What the last was doing there heaven knows, but these names from the past put me in mind of the sort of hotel that has sacrificed comfort for history - never the most luxurious of bedfellows.

What struck me on my arrival was how small The Spread Eagle was for a hotel with 37 bedrooms. The reception, however, was literally an uplifting sight. The ceiling was high and the hall decorated in pastel furniture that prevented any air of gloom. They told me I had been put in the Hilaire Belloc room. Good gracious, had he stayed there, too?

We circumvented an attractive dining room with hanging copper pots and a comfy-looking bar before reaching the bedroom. Antique it may have been, but the pink-and-white wallpaper and upholstery gave the place a gay effect. The ceiling was low and the floor sloped - a lot. This caused not a little trouble.

I ordered a glass of champagne, at £6.50, quite reasonable. When I placed the glass on a table, however, it slid off. I decided it might be wiser to trap the thing between two books. But walking across the floor was like being on a ship.

Rather than continue my balancing act, I opted to have a drink in the bar. The Spread Eagle must be popular as the bar was three-quarters full with couples, many of whom were English, young and, by their billing and cooing, obviously there for a bit of rumpy-pumpy.

After a cigarette - hurrah, smoking was permitted - I noticed from some blurb on the table that the hotel had a spa. As Raymond Chandler once wrote, there are blondes, and then there are blondes. In my experience there are spas, and then there are spas. This was what I call a spa.

Housed at the other end of the hotel, overlooking a garden, was an indoor swimming pool large enough to satisfy a whale, a sauna, a steam room and one of the bestequipped gyms I have ever encountered. The range of beauty treatments on offer was astounding and cost half of London salon prices.

It was a good thing the gym was there as my dinner was faultless. A roulade of smoked salmon with paprika mayonnaise was both unusual and felicitous, and my veal with bean cassoulet tender as a lover's kiss.

For pudding, I had iced berries with hot, white-chocolate sauce. The wines were reasonably priced, beginning at under £13 a bottle. The head waiter, who was born in Italy, was worth the price of the meal alone. An obliging fellow, on hearing I was an opera buff, he entertained me by singing extracts from The Barber of Seville.

I was delighted that the hotel offered a cooked breakfast in one's room, not just a continental. I ordered poached eggs and bacon to soak up any potential hangover and resolved to spend the morning in the gym. When breakfast arrived, I was impressed that the eggs had been poached properly in water, with a soupÁon of vinegar. One disappointment, though, was the unavailability of any croissants.

At about nine, I toddled off to the gym. Except for me, it was empty. All the treatments, however, were fully booked. How English. We tend to think we can work off a gargantuan-meal by doing nothing more than having a body massage, as if the flesh will disappear up the masseuse's sleeve.

As I had some time to wait before my taxi, I asked to see some of the other rooms. I had obviously drawn the short straw. The bedrooms above the reception were huge, with fourposter beds, high ceilings and flat floors. I was told they had all been booked weeks in advance.

I intend to go back to The Spread Eagle one day and sleep in one of these rooms before having all the treatments on offer in the spa. The gym can go to the devil.

The Spread Eagle (01730 816911), South Street, Midhurst, West Sussex. Monday-Thursday, £125-£225 per room for dinner, bed and breakfast (Friday and Saturday, £135-£235).