Hotel: Willy Wallace Hostel, Stirling
Type: Independent Hostel
City: Stirling, Scotland
Address: Willy Wallace Hostel, 77 Murray Place, Stirling, FK8 1AU
Website: Link.
Date Visited: July 2010
General Hotel Rating:
Booking.com: 8.1.
TripAdvisor: 4/5 (5/18 Specialty Lodgings in Stirling).
Hostel World: 8.9, Fabulous.
Enuresis Friendly Rating (1 to 5): 4. See the Enuresis Friendly Rating System Explained.
Details of Stay and Recommendation:
It’s been a while since I actually stayed at this hostel, but because I’m working up to a post on backpacking and staying in hostels as a bedwetter, I thought I’d go through a couple of my past experiences in hostels from my younger days.
So many of my not so good experiences shared on my Hostling as a Bedwetter posts (Part 1 and Part 2) come from this trip. I didn’t want my negative experience on this trip, an experience that was in large part due to my inexperience and bad planning, to colour my review of the hostel however.
This hostel had smaller dorm rooms than I expected, and I was in an 8 person dorm. It was rather crowded despite this, and I was surprised to find the dorm co-ed. Overall the place was fun, they have a well-used common room, and the atmosphere is cozy and collegial. The whole thing also has a kitschy William Wallace theme, given its location.
So this was one of my first experiences staying in a hostel. I was pleased to find the mattresses pre-protected, and went to bed early my first night due to exhaustion from travel. This was not my first stop on my trip; I had previously spent a good week in London. This fact becomes important later.
As I was the first to bed, I didn’t have any trouble discreetly changing into the diapers I was wearing to bed. I should note that this was before some of the better products came on the market, and I think I was wearing Depends Fitted Briefs, a noisy, not-re-wearable, and not-so-reliable choice. I was out like a light, but noise from other people getting into bed woke me up later in the night. It wasn’t too late, perhaps midnight, but I distinctly recall being wet. Not being able to get back to bed in such a state and not wishing to test the absorbency of the Depends with a possible second accident, I got up as quietly as possible and changed. I was still exhausted and fell asleep soon afterwards.
I used this hostel as my base of operations for a number of nights, I can’t recall the exact number now. On the second night I slept through the night, but woke up to a rather significant leak. I managed to discreetly cover this up, but the result was my first walk up to the front desk with a request for a fresh set of sheets. Because I was able to toss my sheets in the laundry pile before going up, I was able to sort of muddle through the exchange with the friendly albeit distracted person at the front desk. I was therefore able to secure fresh sheets without any real explanation.
The third night was a repeat of the first. I went to bed early after a day of exploring, and was awoken sometime in the middle of the night to a loud snore. I was wet, and repeated the usual process. But a difficulty was emerging. I had brought enough Depends for one per night, I had not anticipated going through them so fast, and I ran out after my fourth night. The problem was that the Depends were not really re-usable, so on the nights where I had changed in the middle of the night, I had thrown away the diapers in the morning, regardless of whether they were wet or not.
This caused me quite a bit of concern. I didn’t want to go hunting for a medical supply store of pharmacy in tiny Stirling, I also did not want to have to buy an entire pack for only a couple of pairs, or figure out how to get them all back to my hostel. Instead, for the last few nights, I slept without protection. Thanks in part to some very careful adherence to my before bed routine (fluid limitation, double voiding, no caffeine or alcohol etc.), I was dry on at least one night. But I do recall having two rather large accidents: One occurred in the middle of the night, where once again something woke me up, and I found myself in a very wet bed, and on the other occasion I slept through the night only to find that I had wet the bed in the morning.
Both situations required an embarrassing walk to the front desk with wet sheets. The incident which occurred at night was much more forgiving, as there was no one else around, but the other incident, I distinctly recall having to wait to speak to the person at the front desk, all the while clutching a bundle of rather wet sheets (the laundry cupboard had been locked or something).
As far as the rest of my trip was concerned, I only had one more night in London to worry about, and this is a tale for a future review, though there isn’t much to be told.
Anyhow, this turned into a bit more of a cathartic sharing of a personal experience rather than a review of the hostel. Overall the hostel was nice as far as hostels go, I gave it a 4 on the ranking only because of the difficulties I encountered discreetly disposing of my sheets. There was a laundry cabinet where you could toss sheets, but it wasn’t consistently open.
Chain and Loyalty Program?:
This is an independent hostel, so there are no loyalty points, or membership in any hostelling associations.
The Bedwetting Traveller 