“We only spent a small amount of time in the actual cottage spending most of our days exploring locally.”
On our arrival the cottage was dirty, with dog hair still on the floor, a foot print on one of the chairs and hair and filth in the wet room drain grate, the cooker hood had grease literally dripping from it, the drain in the back of the fridge was blocked, the bbq was falling apart with 1 leg shorter than the other 3, the kitchen floor tile grout was black where it was supposed to be beige. The children's play area has 3 trampolines, 1 of which had no net and 1 of which has 3 springs missing around the edge. Overnight we found the mattresses to be thin and uncomfortable, offering no support. After a couple of days I had to secure a piece of the fence near the entrance to the play area which had fallen over and was laying across the gateway with a nail sticking up through it. On the second day our little boy stood on some broken glass ion our patio area and cut his foot on the way to the hot tub (which was surprisingly clean although the speakers on the side of it were broken) which showed the patio area hadn't been swept. In addition to it's general lack of cleanliness and the unsafe condition of the play area, the cottage was tired, the ceiling needed painting, the debris stored on the clear roof of the hot tub area needed to be removed and the curtain pole over the front door needed to be replaced with one that wasn't broken. After we had found a screwdriver and reassembled the bbq, found a chunk of wood to put under the short leg we found there were no bbq utensils. I also unblocked the drain in the fridge and fished out the mould which had grown in there with a wooden skewer. I bleached the wet room floor but i wasn't prepared to remove what was akin to a dead ferret all along the drain grate. On top of all the above on night 2 of our stay we were kept awake by a fracas outside the main house which resulted in arrests and 2 police vans arrivng at 2am! Needless to say after your host is arrested for common assault you are less inclined to make a complaint in person. Whilst I expect a cottage on a farm to have farm mess, i expect it to be safe and clean as a holiday rental and perhaps not have a cockerel to wake us at the sunrise each morning. I have photographs should you wish to see them.
