Alnwick Holiday Cottages

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Mary - Verified booking

  Spacious property in excellent location. NOT dog friendly, dog “tolerant” at best. Be aware dogs are not permitted upstairs in the property (not easy when open plan staircase!) - not informed of this until after booking, by which time it’s too late to cancel. You pay a £250 damage deposit (of which £10 is retained as an admin fee). You pay a £95 cleaning(!) fee. We found - Previous guests dirty towels hanging behind doors. One supposedly clean folded towel dirty and stained. On stripping beds on departure - disgusting brown stain on mattress protector. Downstairs loo does not flush properly (reported by a previous guest months ago). Router and connections lying on floor in a jumble of cables. Cream carpet badly stained, and, on vacuuming prior to departure found we filled an entire dust canister! Considering we were out all day, I hardly think we created that amount of dirt. On our return home we highlighted the issues we had found only to be told that unless the admin company were notified DURING our stay, no action/compensation offered. Such a shame as with proper management this could be an excellent property. As it is, we’d recommend you avoid!

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• Clare - Verified booking

  The house was lovely, everything was high spec and felt quite new. Loved the dining room. Location was great, walking distance to shops, restaurants and coast. Surrounding countryside is lovely, not much traffic and not too busy with visitors. Lots of places of historical interest to visit and stunning beaches. We were lucky with the weather which helped Some instructions re: central heating, dishwasher would have been helpful. We figured it out eventually. No streaming services available. Only one set of keys is not enough, especially for 4 people Communication with Host and Stay was very unsatisfactory. We didn’t get the joining instructions a week before as we were advised in writing. I had to phone up to be told that the system had changed and they were now only giving one days notice. They hadn’t bothered to contact customers who were affected by this change. The reason for the change was that some people getting into apartments a day early. Not my problem! We ended up being given two different key codes which was pretty stressful the day before you’ve got a long journey.

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• Doug - Verified booking

  The holiday property was fine, but we were not impressed with Sykes Cottages Customer Service.

  We rang on the Monday (20th May) to ask how to get the central heating and heated towel rail working; we were put on hold while (we were told) the assistant tried to contact Northumbria Coast and Country Cottages. However we held on for 15 minutes (at the very expensive mobile phone rate) but then gave up as your assistant had still not got back to us. (I would have thought it was standard procedure to come back to us after a minute or two to update us on progress, but apparently not so at Sykes Cottages!) The next day we discovered that Northumbria Coast and Country Cottages was just round the corner from our cottage in Alnmouth: surely your assistant could have told us this on the Monday? We then popped in to Northumbria’s office, and their staff were very helpful and sorted it; however the gentleman we spoke to told us that Sykes Cottages had not rung them till the Tuesday, so goodness knows what your assistant was doing during the quarter of an hour I was kept hanging on on the Monday! IT REALLY IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

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• Ken - Verified booking

  Plus points - Lovely cottage in new build area.

  Nice accessible walks from doorstep and a good base for surrounding landmarks, e.g Bamburgh, Dunstanburgh etc. Clean and modern, with good facilities. Welcome pack with essentials which was appreciated! Use of swimming pool and personal hot tub. Negative points - Smithy on end of row next to car park so everyone was walking past our window to get to their car as was only access. Only one bedroom had a mirror. During our 1 week stay we suffered 2 major power cuts (one over 12hrs) which, although no direct fault of the owner, hampered our stay quite a bit. Also we had to contact owner ourselves as he didn’t let us know what was happening which was a little frustrating. Although a designated ‘dark sky’ area, it was difficult to navigate in the dark from the pool back to our cottage - low level lighting may help? WiFi was hit and miss, no router that we could see, perhaps in adjacent cottage? All in all we would stay again if these few issues could be improved. A lovely house in a quiet area. Thankyou for having us.

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• Phil - Verified booking

  Just returned home from a fantastic week at this cottage.

  The property is in a brilliant location, very clean and comfy, with all the facilities you could need, including a hot tub just outside the cottage for sole use of the occupants. several cottages have these and they are drained and cleaned after each check out. On arrival a lovely, generous welcome pack awaits including tea / coffee. The cottage is well stocked with dishwasher / washing machine etc all the facilities you would expect for this standard of accommodation. The site also has a very nice swimming pool to use. The staff actually cut the grass to make a paths either down to the beach at Newton or into the village of Embleton, eliminating the need to walk on the road, this has been really well thought out. The walks for here are endless and can be as short or as long as you want. Nice little duck pond with four ducks on site and it's not just for the little ones, these are very well fed believe me. Big shout out to the on site staff all really friendly and helpful. Thanks for a great week .

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