Good Hotel Guide
Hostels and Hotels in Motherwell
If you have a hotel in any of these locations then please contact us to list your hotel below, free of charge.
Airdrie, Bellshill, Biggar, Carluke, Coatbridge, Hamilton, Lanark, Larkhall, Motherwell, Shotts, Strathaven, Wishaw
For UK travelers going abroad, we recommend Tenerife, with feel of the UK yet all the sun of Tenerife. Read an extract below from More Ketchup than Salsa, the story of a English couple who left the UK to set up life in Tenerife. Info on how to buy the book can be found below.
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Below you will find short extracts from More ketchup than Salsa by Joe Cawley – not to be missed.
Short Extract
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Frank was a dour truck driver from Oldham who had brought his kids to Tenerife after separating from his wife. At 49 he had taken early retirement and bought one of the first apartments on El Beril. Along with most of the English-speaking expats and I’m sure other nationalities as well he got easily bored. Being bored abroad is a mischievous combination. We had a standard team of barflies, eager to occupy the tedious sunny hours with other people’s concerns. They worked on a rigid two-two formation: Frank would hold the left wing next to the Dorada pump; Al, an alcoholic from Liverpool with a mysteriously large amount of cash and an equal quantity of razor-sharp wit, would provide a constant flow of banter for him to head at whatever target happened to have been chosen that day. At the back, Frank’s son, Danny, would lob the odd remark over his dad’s shoulder or pass it along to his sister, Sam, to dribble with for a while until the two attackers took control. The two kids had tried a term in a local school when they first arrived but didn’t like it and hadn’t been back since. ‘They know enough already, couple of wise-arses,’ Frank would argue when the subject was broached. Since their brief affair with education, they spent much of their time with their dad which, when not fishing, was more often than not on a Smugglers bar stool. Danny probably knew more than us about running the bar, from cocktail recipes to how to change a barrel. Over the first few nights the thirteen-year-old would often help Joy or Faith out in times of crisis. ”Undred ‘n’ fifty pesetas,’ he would demand from customers, his eyes barely level with the black painted bartop. The two girls had been scared out of changing barrels by Frank ‘Don’t lean over it. Knew a man in England who got his head taken clear off’ whereas Danny would be only too happy to oblige.
Airdrie, Bellshill, Biggar, Carluke, Coatbridge, Hamilton, Lanark, Larkhall, Motherwell, Shotts, Strathaven, Wishaw
Siobhan’s mood did lighten however, when we told her about the plan, and even though it meant that she would have to get on a plane to Tenerife herself, she was somewhat heartened that action was now being taken. In the meantime, we had appointed a ‘team of detectives’ to find out more about the couple of squatters. Barry, our occasional helper, was put on static surveillance duty. Before becoming an airborne trolley dolly he had flirted briefly with the police force, and thus was deemed the most qualified. His job was to keep track of the movements in and out of Siobhan’s apartment. He stationed himself at a bay window seat in the apartment of Mrs Tanner, one of El Beril’s elderly year-round residents, diagonally opposite to Siobhan’s. Not only did he have a clear view of the steps leading up to the one and only entrance to the apartment, but he also had an unlimited supply of tea and home-made scones that Mrs Tanner forced on him with remarkable regularity. Wayne was assigned to tail Pedro in the Smugglersmobile (when we weren’t loading it with beans and tuna). We were curious to find out what the Spaniard did during the day and whether he worked or not. Wayne, not one of the world’s most patient characters, said he would have preferred to just beat him up and torture our requirements out of him. I explained that this would invariably lead to me being arrested, and thus he would more than likely be out of a job with us. Frank took on the last of our tasks, accompanied by his detective sidekick and Spanish translator, Danny. They were to take the Polaroids to the Hotel Conquistador and make enquiries as to whether the Czech girl was actually working there.
Mario had installed a dishwasher, which we promptly uninstalled. It was proving just as efficient to wash by hand as the machine would take the best part of an hour to trudge through its cycle. Not only that, close inspection revealed that it was the home of probably the cleanest community of cockroaches anywhere in the Western world. The damp, warm interior provided their perfect pied-à-terre, a veritable holiday camp of spindly beasties waiting to jump out from gleaming crockery. Proportionally, the little things in life shouldn’t scare the big things. But it happens. It was a common sight to see a bar load of adults fleeing from one side of the room to the other just to avoid being anywhere near a two-inch insect. Of course, the bug realises the terror it can cause. Think of the power trip it must be on, scattering people like a motorbike in a ballroom. It’s believed that the cockroach is the only creature that could withstand a nuclear holocaust and thereby take over the world. If those aspirations were being considered, we were doing our utmost to rain on their parade. One of our more common purchases was Raid. At the cash and carry it was the pharmaceutical equivalent of buying condoms. You hid a couple of cans between the beans and frozen chips before making your way sheepishly to the checkout.