I visited Mercure Dartford at the weekend for my friend's birthday. It was a lovely girly getaway with ten of us staying overnight. We arrived late afternoon on the Saturday just before check-in and after a short wait in the lobby we made our way to our rooms which were clean, modern and cleverly designed—plenty of plugs and mirrors! The hotel looks out over the Brands Hatch go kart track where you can hear them whizzing around in the distance.

We got changed into the robes provided and each had a 25 minute back massage in the spa. My massage was definitely deep tissue as my masseuse was super strong and actually caused me pain, but in a good way! The indoor pool was heated and there was a Jacuzzi, steam room and sauna, but unfortunately there weren't enough loungers to go round. I didn't bring my gym kit with me but I wish I had done as the gym was well equipped and nice and quiet.

After relaxing in the spa, we sat outside on the patio area and had lunch with some drinks. I went for a chicken wrap and chips, plus a couple of Sipsmith vodka and lemonades for £22.

At dinnertime, we all got semi dressed up and made our way to the restaurant. I had salt and pepper quid to start, prawn linguine for main (which was dyed with squid ink) and chocolate brownie for dessert. One of the girls brought a surprise birthday cake for my friend and the kitchen staff kindly lit the sparklers and brought it out to us. They then kept the leftovers in the fridge overnight for us to collect the next day. 

In the morning, we came down for breakfast and enjoyed the extensive continental and full English fry up buffet. We sat out after on the patio again and enjoyed the sun for a few hours before making a leisurely check-out.

Overall, I would rate this hotel 3.5 out of 5 stars. It was brilliant value for money. We each paid £88 and that included our overnight stay, massage, dinner up to £25 a head and breakfast! What let the hotel down slightly was the sometimes slow/inefficient service, lack of loungers and the location as there's not anything to do nearby apart from go kart.