The Crowne Plaza was perfectly nice - decent rooms, clean, nice location, parking spaces, good bar. If you book in advance you can get pretty decent room rates (IIRC I got a room for around £80 a night - and got an upgrade, even as a lowly PC Gold).
I can confirm that the area is nice to walk around of a Sunday morning...desperately looking for a greasy spoon/decent fry-up to cure a hangover
Phil