The cottage itself is lovely, the bedrooms are spacious, the shower was fantastic and having use of a washer and dryer was an added bonus. The cottage is in an ideal location both for the centre of town and for the rest of the Lakes which all makes for a perfect stay, however there were a number of issues mainly to do with the cleaning/maintenance of the property.
Cleaning Issues
1) Cobwebs were evident in both the Dining Room and also the Master Bedroom
2) The fridge had not been cleaned properly and there was mould evident in the salad drawers with 2 live insects crawling around
3) The Sofa was filthy with liquid marks on the framework and the cushions themselves had crumbs on them. On lifting the cushions there were further crumbs on the sofa base along with a dirty tissue, sweets and some fries.The sofa also needs pulling out and the wall cleaning behind and floor cleaning underneath.
4) The floors had been swept or vacuumed but they had not lifted either the mat in the lounge or the kitchen area to clean below these.
5) When the floor in the utility room has been cleaned they had cleaned around the ironing board and not moved it to clean below/behind
6) There was a vast amount of dust and a sock behind the dryer - see point 3 below
7) The walls above the tiling in the kitchen area were dirty from splashed food and also the walls in the entrance and the door panel need wiping down.
Maintenance Issues
1) 2 Halogen lamps out of the 3 present in the kitchen area were not working
2) The dryer extractor pipe needs a jubilee clip attaching to the vent pipe, it keeps falling off - I pulled the dryer forward to re-attach the hose and this is when I found the dirt behind it - the pipe falls off when in use, hence the build up of dust/fluff
3) The towel ring in the W/C is loose and needs tightening
4) The toilet seat in the bathroom is loose and needs tightening
5 )The TV remote for the satellite TV is broken and we could not access terrestrial during the evening
6) Kitchen clock batteries need replacing as do the batteries in one of the torches
7) The door to the bedroom floor is catching on the floor
Suggestions
1) I would suggest replacing the knife block - the knives provided were useless and would not even slice a tomato
2) With up to 6 people sharing the one bathroom, I would have thought there would have been a hook on the bathroom door to hang your bathrobe, the bedroom doors had them but not the bathroom
3) Whilst I appreciate that we had use of a washer dryer, I feel that leaving 1 tea towel for the week for up to 6 people is totally inadequate
4) I would suggest attaching some anti-slip tape to the 2 rugs in the master bedroom - as soon as you stand on these you go flying! We actually placed them under the bed out of the way to remove the risk.
The above is an honest review of our week in the cottage, some of the points listed are minor and there are also some suggestions on improvements that could be made. As I mentioned previously the cottage itself is very nice and comfortable and is in an ideal location and we had had a great week's stay. I'm not going to say the above ruined our week as it didn't. That aside the above issues were more of an irritation/frustration and are issues that shouldn't have arisen. I did not expect on my week's break to have to start deep cleaning the sofa before we felt comfortable sitting on it or have to clean the fridge before we could put food in it.
I notice from comments in both the visitors book on the property and also the online reviews, that this is not the first time cleanliness of the property has been an issue.
