In reply to john arran:
> I'm not saying that sleeping on a really poor mattress should feel fine, but in my experience of sleeping on a wide variety of hotel, guesthouse and friends' beds there really isn't a lot of difference between very expensive and almost bottom of the line.
Tell that to my hips and back, you can tell them roughly every 1.5 hours when I wake up in pain in just about any bed that isn't mine.
And if a bed is disturbingly soft it's usually not the fault of the mattress as there usually is too much give in whatever the mattress is sitting on.
This is why as well as a good mattress we have a good bed too, it's made from reclaimed ships timbers and held together with coach bolts.
After being bombarded by adverts I finally broke and ordered an Emma mattress, it was on sale and we got a king-size for about £400. I normally spend between £1500 and £2000 for a mattress so I was sceptical to say the least.
Had to leave it in the back room for a week for the chemical smell to dissipate and for the first 3 or 4 days it felt very strange but after those first few days it became very comfortable and where I would wake every 1.5 hours in pain from my hip and have to roll on to the other side just to wake again in 1.5 hours to roll back I have had zero hip pain since buying it and a massive reduction in back pain too.
Of course the law of sod says that now I can sleep through the night pain free it's time to start getting up at 4am to empty the bladder.