The house is down a little lane away from the bustle, it’s so green and English garden picturesque. The garden is stunning and the deck is a great feature, it’s a really pity there’s no outdoor garden furniture (especially table) to enjoy. The house is big and I would say looks as advertised. It’s very dated but has its own little seaside period charm. I would say as a whole the property could exceed one’s expectations if it weren’t for many other little things. Ruth the owner was very communicative, despite being abroad and having a house manager, this made up for some of the issues. The neighbours were an absolute delight, even lent us their bbq for one night so we could enjoy the outside a bit.
The house was overrun by cobwebs, no exaggeration here. We spent the first while removing cobwebs. Whilst I don’t mind some webs and spiders, we all know their value especially in terms of keeping mosquitoes at bay. However this was too much, especially for a rental you expect to be clean. The little girl with us was truly frightened took us ages to calm her and we’re from South Africa, so we’re used to the outdoors, camping etc.
The chairs in the kitchen are for children, they’re tiny. One was also broken, I sat on it and almost fell off as the back gave way. I noticed someone had clearly tried to fix it before.
The kitchen hob and oven had childlock on. Although the manuals were left for us, this should have been made clear. We turned the oven on, thinking it was working (it did get slightly warm) but we were wrong and we ruined food. Eventually we figured it out hours later.
The property says it comes with toilet paper, dishwasher tablets, toiletries, and towels (amongst other things). There were no towels laid out for us so we had to search for these and found them in the utility cupboard, which in someways was good because then we could get out an extra food towel for the freezer we needed to defrost. I wouldn’t advertise the property as coming with toiletries, it had a teatree shampoo and some other hand wash thing, rather take that off and leave previous guests left overs as a kind gesture. There were no dishwasher tablets at all, the packet was empty. We had to buy our own, unnecessary extra expense and trip to the shop because we could have brought from home. We were left with two half rolls of toilet paper per bathroom (they weren’t even full rolls unless they buy those super cheap things that come as a half roll) - that was for 6 people for 2 nights. I’ve never rented anywhere that says they provide toilet paper and then leave you an amount that is clearly not enough for your stay and number of people.
