Portland's Olympic Dreams

Advantages: Enjoyable location for outdoor walks and adventures
Disadvantages: Scary locals, and rough neighbourhoods

...After the overwhelming response to my Lelant Review, I have followed it up with a review of Portland, this review is a little long, but I have tried to mix all the relevant parts together to make it a bit more interesting. I've looked at the people, the tourist attractions, and the facilities. Portland is a rather large island off the coast of Dorset. Some people do not regard Portland as an island as it's attached to the mainland, however I assure you it is. Originally the only thing connecting Portland with the Mainland was Chesil Beach, but even this only connected at Abbotsbury some 12 miles from the start. Stretching from Dead Man's Bay, Portland to West Bay, Bridport; Chesil beach is the longest "natural" beach in the world totalling 18 miles. In the late 1800's work began on connecting the mainland by bridge at a point...

sghawken 02.04.2006 · Read review
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Review of Island of Portland

Perfect Portland

Advantages: Good Prices
Disadvantages: Only Book Direct

...I would receommend Portalnd Holidays Direct to anyone who doesnt mind booking their holiday direct and anyone who likes a Thomson holiday as Portland is part of the Thomson/Tui group - so your getting the same as you would get travelling with Thomson. How to book ----------------- You can only book by telephone or internet. If you book online on the internet they normally give online discounts - look out for special online booking offers. Their website is completley secure so you can feel safe using your credit/debit card to pay. If you pay a deposit you can pay additional amounts by telephone to their dedicated after sales team. If you book by telephone there is a dedicated call centre waiting to take your call - in my experiences they have always been really friendly and helpful and give honest opinions. I have never...

carol_uk17 30.07.2006 · Read review
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Review of Portland Direct

Portland Hotel, Skuba And Grill Resturant

Advantages: RIGHT IN THE HEART OF THE MUST SEE'S AND DO'S OF FOLKESTONE
Disadvantages: PARKING

...The Portland Hotel, Skuba Bar & Grill Restaurant. Owned by a gay couple called Lee & Tin, These guys have made a name for themselves in this establishment and the town. About 7 years ago this building was run down and dirty. They bought at auction with great prospects. Over the years the popularity of the bar has grown substantially. Started off as 'gay friendly' only gay people went to the bar and a handful of straight people or the hotel guests. Now homosexuality is more accepted, it is mixed and very busy especially in the summer. Bar and Beer Gardens & Terrace It has an outdoor drinking area with garden in front which greets all people from different walks of life. Pets are also too welcome in the garden and can grab a bowl whilst their owners grab a pint...

XFactorBoi 16.09.2007 (06.10.2008) · Read review
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Review of The Portland Hotel, Folkestone

Portlands complaint

Advantages: offered ad-free free hosting, CGI bins etc.
Disadvantages: server downtime, very slow service. ftp access always oversubscribed. Low bandwidth allowances.

...That malapropism will have eluded all but the most literary minded, but hey never mind! I saw this free ISP and webhosting site and was looking at it to host a small site for a friend, whilst I was having server troubles. I looked at the whole package and it didn't look bad, as they were offering a dial-up ISP service, pop accounts, domain registration, and for those wanting to run their own ISP, there were a variety of packages available, as well as the opportunity for server colocation and also the opportunity to buy servers through them. Seeing as their site shows them to be ISP of the month according to Internet Magazine for September 2000 and November 2000, I was expecting something pretty good, and the fact that at the present there are apparently in excess of 160,000 sites hosted at Portland looked impressive, and a sign...

Morgenhund 08.02.2001 · Read review
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Review of portland.co.uk

Oregon's Beautiful Capitol. Portlands Surprise.

Advantages: A lively modern town with beautiful mountain & rivers.
Disadvantages: 'Tis on "the far side"

...Portland in Oregon, a buzzing, friendly town, full of vitality, with a most beautiful river running through it. Just a few steps from the main thoroughfare, across a lawned area with fountains flowing, and you can picnic beside the river or cool off with the kids in the fountain. Modern buildings, shopping malls, town squares, all inviting you to buy. The main shopping mall in the centre, has the most amazing selection of stores, with clothing furniture gifts, all relating to the area, wood carvings, leather and skin, beautiful tiles for your home, incredibly modern home furnishings, pictures and ornaments, mostly made from local craftsmen. The local American Indians provide many artifacts, fashioning them from natural resourses, including lovely jewellery, made mostly from silver and torquoise. On one occassion we went to...

elinor.z 21.05.2005 (05.08.2005) · Read review
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Review of Portland

Buxton great, Portland Hotel not great

Advantages: Close to the Pavillion Gardens
Disadvantages: Below par food, below par rooms.

...Buxton is a picturesque town, clearly a place for holidays for the well-off in days gone by. The Portland Hotel is located near the Opera House, and opposite the Pavilion Gardens (but with a view of the car park, rather than the gardens), and may have been a decent hotel once, but not anymore. It's a medium sized, with 22 rooms, and it definitley looks like it may have seen more affluent times in years gone by. All rooms are en suite. However, our room had an extremely small en suite? erm, I can't call it a bathroom? toilet with a shower in. Our room was nicely decorated, but somehow felt like a very standard B & B room - possibly because of the smell of smoke which was lingering on everything in there. The publicity states that you have Sky TV - in our room that seemed to be restricted to one sports channel and 2 radio channels...

rsmith 16.10.2001 · Read review
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Review of Portland Hotel (Buxton - Derbyshire)

Portland Direct

Advantages: Quick booking
Disadvantages: None

...We have recently returned from our annual holiday in Majorca. For the first time we booked through Portland Direct which is affiliated to Thomsons. We made the booking by telephone, the staff being extremely helpful. The tickets arrived in good time for the holiday. On arrival at our hotel it was almost exactly as the brochure had described it and we were pleasantly surprised as it was better in real life then in the Portland Direct brochure. On advantage of booking with Portland is that if you take out their travel insurance it is possible to pay the balance of your holiday in up to ten monthly installments which is good because you do not need to find the entire balance 2 months before the holiday but can spread the payments over the ten months. We're going with Portland next year....

Wicksie 07.09.2000 · Read review
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Review of Portland Direct

Portland - want speed, go somewhere else

Advantages: can be free
Disadvantages: very very slow to respond, i haven't gotten a response yet

...I have not even experienced the whole portland experience and i am already sick of it. I have signed up for free web hosting and you know what? That was a few days ago and i haven't heard a word from them. Frankly if you want to be able to set up your website quickly I would suggest finding a web host you have to pay for. I know it always hurts to pay for something that you can EVENTUALLY get free but if you sign up for hosting with portland you won't get your site up quickly and thus you are WASTING the money you spent on reserving your domain for a year or however long you reserved it for. Before i had bought i domain i also signed up at portland for one of their own free subdomain websites. Did i get a reply? No. After submitting the information they asked for, a message on the website appeared saying something about thankyou...

ozcr 02.08.2001 · Read review
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Review of portland.co.uk

The icing on the cake

Advantages: Everything can be done on-line, Subsidiary company of Thomsons
Disadvantages: None that I am aware of yet. but if you know of any let me know before I book

...This company could be responsible for reducing the number of their sister travel agencies on the highstreet in the near future. Being a big holiday fan, and someone who likes to book next years break before this years is out of the way, I think I could quickly become addicted to this company. My ventures to find suitable holidays at reasonable price, often involve spending many hours of my precious time sitting in Travel Agents pouring over brochures until something suitable turns up. This is a carefully engineered exercise that can take many weeks, will have travel agents battoning down the hatches when they see me coming, and looks of panic as they all quickly pick up their telephones and pretend to look busy, yes I am 'the original customer from hell'. PORTLAND DIRECT This company, as you may already be aware, are...

sue.51 09.06.2001 (29.05.2002) · Read review
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Review of Portland Direct

Meet me at the 'Spoons!

Advantages: Cheap drinks, good atmsophere and GREAT toilets!
Disadvantages: Menu a bit restrictive.

...A few years ago Chesterfield got its first Wetherspoon?s pub and soon after we got a second. The second is The Spa Lane Vaults, but the first one is by far my favourite ~ this is The Portland Hotel. ~~~A BIT OF HISTORY. You will find the Portland on West Bars, not far from the bottom edge of the New Square Market Place (this is Chesterfield?s smaller market area). As well as being a large pub it is also a hotel; it is now a Wetherlodge, but it has always been an inn. It was originally built in the 1890?s ~ this is when the Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway opened (in 1897). West Bars was where the station for the Market Place was located and it was decided that a hotel would be a good idea. The William Stones Brewery (based in Sheffield) applied for a license in1898 and the Portland was officially opened...

tange 19.11.2003 · Read review
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Review of The Portland Hotel - Chesterfield