“Great, but so easily could have been perfect”
At these prices, the owners have set the bar rather high. ...
At these prices, the owners have set the bar rather high.
No problem finding it despite it being somewhat further along the road the directions provided suggested and it was on the R not the L – but being such a striking design, impossible to miss in daylight. Easy access and plenty of parking space, with some usefully under cover
In terms of overall internal design, it is excellent. All the rooms and living areas are light, spacious and well-furnished. The first-floor patio area is lovely. All the main fixtures and fittings are obviously good quality and the general standard of finish is high. Given what this renovation must have cost, it is surprising that the finishing touches appear to have been skimped – all small things, but disappointing and a bit irritating.
At the more serious end, on the Friday we arrived there were literally dozens of dead flies and ladybirds on the upper floor windows sills, particularly in the kitchen with no obvious explanation. With some also inside the light fittings & no open windows it rather seems the problem is internal rather than external. The packet of chocolate biscuits had welded together so had obviously been in the sun for a while previously. The flies did not reappear but some ladybirds did. We contacted the mobile number provided and had to leave a VM requesting a call back but never received one. When we have used the same number previously we have only received generalised text replies when a phone call/discussion was appropriate. We had to call about another matter Sunday and this time did receive a prompt call-back.
The housekeeper insists that the accommodation was thoroughly checked on the Friday morning but I cannot believe that so many flies got in, died and became desiccated over a matter of a few hours. Also, it appears this is a known problem that apparently cannot be resolved??????
Annoyingly in the kitchen there are no wall cupboards or anywhere else to store anything you might have brought with you, notable food. The cupboards were not clean with a faint smell of grease. Some of the oven trays/dishes looked like they had been put away without a wash – some were worn out and needed to be replaced.
Same applies to other kitchenware – plenty of glasses, crockery etc. but few serving dishes, casseroles, food storage containers etc. so catering for 8 would be very difficult. We brought some flowers, but there is not a single vase.
A few other bits and pieces in case they make a difference to you. If you are a light sleeper, the creaky upstairs floorboards might be a problem – odd in such a new building. The broadband runs at only 3Mbs max so streaming will be tricky! The TV signal is also patchy even on BBC1. There is no heated towel rail in the bathroom (nor indeed any space for potentially 8 towels) or any radiators (as the heating is underfloor) so there is nowhere indoors to dry washing that cannot be tumble-dried despite there being a large utility room. In the evenings the tiled downstairs areas were chilly, notably the bathroom floor – this was a problem for us as we needed the bath for the two babies in our group. Some of the sheets had stains – I’m not suggesting they hadn’t been washed, just not very well or inspected before they were used. The underfloor heating was relatively unresponsive and internal temperatures were more dictated by the sun being out or not.
Relatively little was provided so take your own kitchen roll, foil, cling film etc. Tea, instant coffee and sugar were, but with no indication of age apart from the Sweetex which was dated 09/2017! – better to provide smaller quantities in “unopened” packaging.
Try as we may, we could not get the outside lighting to work at night.
The tranquillity was disrupted on the Monday morning when a chap started mowing the lawn just after we’d got the babies off to sleep. Not really a problem but had we known in advance we could have arranged our day differently. Same later in the week when someone turned up at 08:45 to do some form of internal inspection and we felt guilty about sending him away.
A second TV in the kitchen/diner would have been nice and even some of the bedrooms had the wiring in place.
Given the big plusses and minuses, would we come back? We’d certainly like to but would need to be sure some of the main issues had been resolved before rebooking.
- Tia_Junior36, April 2019
