About your hosts

Tom and Roy run Lloyds as a partnership in each meaning of the word. We have our own particular strengths and experience, and our contribution to the day-to-day running of the hotel and interaction with guests reflects these. Neither of us is Welsh, although Tom on his mother's side of the family, has a modest claim. We bought a cottage in a very remote area near Llanerfyl in late 1987, and several years later, after extending the cottage, re-roofing it and planting more than 1500 trees on the 6 acres of land, decided to sell our London home and move to mid-Wales and find a business we could turn our hands to. Our first visit to Llanidloes to view Lloyds was on a sunny Saturday, the town was bustling, the street market came right up Great Oak street, and we bumped into one of our neighbours from Llanerfyl, who told us she regularly came to the town to shop for clothes and have her hair done: this impressed us.

Tom and Roy at their property near Llanerfyl, with recently planted trees and in the background a small pond.

Hotel commitments mean we cannot often visit the cottage, and when we do our time is mostly taken up with emergency jobs. However, we have made some progress with the building, and in the last two years have planted another 350 trees (to keep out of sight the wind turbines which are likely to surround the property). We will retire there, once Tom reaches 65 (in 2015), and plan to do bed and breakfast and short breaks with dinner, to provide some continuity with our life at Lloyds, and contact with the many guests who have become friends.

Tom (surname Lines) has born and brought up in Beckenham, Kent. He graduated in Bristol with a BEd in 1972 and for several years taught mathematics there (at Clifton College) and in various London schools. His spare time hobby, singing with the Philharmonia chorus at many concerts in Britain and Europe, encouraged him to train as a professional singer at the Royal Academy of Music for four years from 1979. The career openings for a talented, but not world-class baritone proving few, Tom joined the Lord Chancellor’s department as a computer programer, and from there moved to a private training company in Holborn, where he taught programing and systems analysis for four years before moving to Llanidloes and transferring to the hospitality industry, where his people skills have come into their own.

And back at the hotel (in the breakfast room).

Roy (surname Hayter) was born in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe - the African connection soon becomes apparent to guests from the display of art throughout the hotel. After graduating with a BA in hotel and catering management from the Scottish Hotel School (now defunct, sadly), part of University of Strathclyde, in 1972, he remained in the UK initially to gain experience, and then permanently as the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorated. A varied career, mostly in London, and including three years as chef manager for a merchant bank in Moorgate, led to over 20 years with the industry's statutory training board (since a sector skills council) producing training material for the hospitality industry, editing and writing text books (12 as the accredited author), published by Pergamon, Heinemann, Macmillan Education, Thomson Learning and the Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board. Roy has written on health and safety for Croners until 2011, and for over ten years has contributed a regular column from media reports on the industry, for the quarterly 'Hospitality Review', published by Threshold Press of Newbury.

Almost all the improvements to Lloyds we have made ourselves. Tom does the plumbing, woodwork and tiling; Roy the electrical work (he wired his first house, on a farm in Zimbabwe, in his teens), wall papering and carpet fitting. Tom chooses the colour schemes, we both share the painting. The stylish fittings in Room 7.

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