We enjoyed a wonderful stay at Still Waters at the end of June and would highly recommend it. Unfortunately several small points let the house down from being absolutely superb, and could easily be rectified by the owner and management company. They should not put prospective occupants off, but alerted to what to anticipate.
PLUS POINTS
• The house has an excellent internal layout and spacious, private garden. Plenty of furniture for dining and relaxing, though some relocation of settees is necessary to allow more than 4 to be able to view the TV.
• It is ideally situated just yards from the seafront of this attractive and interesting seaside location, allowing great walks along the coast and into the town.
• Also easy reach of many local places of interest - the coast and RSPB centres, Fishbourne Roman Palace, Petworth House, Arundel Castle and the Weald Folk Museum.
• First impressions on arrival were excellent and being largely refurbished recently then modern kitchen facilities were a great asset with more than ample crockery/cutlery including mugs and glasses – but sadly no kitchen roll was provided, which is rather essential.
• The beds were very comfortable with the provision of small torches in each bedroom a nice touch, though perhaps extension cables to access the electric sockets located behind the beds would have been more useful.
NEGATIVE POINTS
• The house was generally clean and tidy but the tops of steel bins in bathrooms were dusty and unpleasantly sticky while the bathroom mirrors needed a good clean and there was obvious rust on the shower curtain rail.
• Having said that there is a severe lack of any mirrors in bathrooms/en suites (none in the bedrooms) as has been observed in earlier reviews.
• Small shaving mirrors were all that are provided in the bathroom but with no flat surface there to put it on this proved difficult to use balanced on the edge of the sink.
• The silicone sealing gasket on the plug in the bathroom was missing so shaving there became quite a challenge as you could not fill the sink and had to keep the water running permanently.
• As the house could have taken up to 10 guests, then we felt the provision of just two spare toilet rolls overall was rather inadequate as replacements for the part-used ones provided in the four toilets – 2 en-suites, bathroom and downstairs WC.
• The house booklet could be more helpful with with stripped down, basic one-page instructions e.g. for the cooker and hob – one doesn’t want to spend time reading through 20 pages of the provided original cooker manual to find how to switch it on.
• Also this house booklet while emphasising the need to put out the refuse bins for collection every Thursday, one has to again search for which week of the cycle one is dealing with (recycling or general rubbish), and it would be useful to be told which type of rubbish goes into which coloured bin. Each county seems to use different colours.
• Tide timetables provided expired 4 months prior to our visit so were replaced – crucial if attempting a coastal walk.
• We enjoyed the many restaurants in Emsworth most days but, when we decided to prepare our meal in the house, our biggest shock was finding burnt-on food in a saucepan and garlic remnants left in the garlic press. Not the sort of things you would expect housekeeping staff to monitor normally and we would lay no blame to them - but just reflected some careless or uncaring previous occupiers, so worth noting by the management. We ensured all our utensils and cutlery/crockery was left spotless, but management may consider that perhaps all needs a blitz clean – and a quick glance by the housekeepers after each occupancy in future – perhaps before the deposit is refunded.
• A minor complaint noted by previous reviews and probably unresolvable at this time, is that in such a well refurbished house every tread of the stairs squeaks considerably in use.
It’s addressing little things like these that would turn this really great and economical house into one rated as spectacular by guests.
