The location itself was nice enough, far more remote than expected and it took quite a while to get to places. Being in the middle of a forest and surrounded by horses meant that there were huge numbers of flies and horseflies, if windows were opened in the heat, the house filled with flies and mosquitoes.
The house itself was a reasonable size but we were surprised to see that the furnishings were generally quite worn out and that the leather sofa that looked quite nice in the photos was covered in rips.
One of the upstairs bedrooms had just one small window, approximately 20cm x 20cm making it incredibly dark, airless and claustrophobic, the mattress in the downstairs bedroom was completely worn out and would instantly make you roll into the middle of the bed, none of the people sleeping in these rooms got much sleep for the whole week.
On arrival the property appeared to be clean but it quickly became clear that it had not received more than a surface clean, for example chair arms had sticky blobs on them and the island in the kitchen had weeks worth of spilt food underneath.
The dishwasher was broken on arrival and despite it clearly being very old, the owner had blamed the previous occupants for 'not stacking it correctly'. After 3 days of excuses we had to somewhat forcefully requested that it be replaced.
All of the crockery and cutlery was filthy and we had to wash everything before we used it, and when the cleaner eventually changed the dishwasher, she used a mop that had clearly not been washed or disinfected for months and then threw it back in the cupboard dirty and full of germs.
Despite us all eating the same food and doing our best to disinfect the place, it wasn't long before more than half of our party began getting getting stomach upsets and diarrhoea.
Outside there were wooden loungers round the pool, 2 of these were already broken and 2 more were old and worn out and felt like they would break each time you sat on them, despite us all being very slim.
Overall the property gave the impression of a holiday house that had been furnished with second hand furniture by owners based in South Africa, reluctant to spend what is necessary to maintain a holiday rental.
As the cleaner lived next door, we felt uncomfortable mentioning cleaning issues at the time.
Despite paying a substantial amount for cleaning and leaving it cleaner than when we arrived, we were told one week after departure that the house required extra cleaning!!