Melrose Holiday Cottages

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Janice - Verified booking

  This could be a really lovely holiday cottage.

  Sadly it isn't. Pros: warm with comfortable beds, opposite the Abbey and very close to the centre of Melrose. Cons: the sitting room must be the most charmless room I have encountered in a holiday cottage for 35 years. The furniture looks like Auction house rejects, is badly arranged and the chairs and sofa are very uncomfortable. There is no WiFi and consequently no TV streaming service. I think people do expect WiFi these days. The kitchen only has the lights under the kitchen units and one table lamp. Not enough light for a kitchen. The stairs are steep and narrow which can't be helped. One of the bedrooms has the radiator behind the wardrobe. The windows are painted shut so it's impossible to air the rooms. The drawers are stiff so it would be easy to pull the whole drawer unit over. This gets annoying as the week goes on. The bathroom is the worst room. The shower screen doesn't move so it's really difficult to get in and out of the bath while also avoiding the low ceiling. It would be impossible to bath a young child. The towel rail/radiator doesn't heat up and obviously needs bleeding. The air extractor doesn't work and condensation drips on your head when you get out of the bath. The shower is integral to the taps and these never work properly. The toilet seat is loose and the toilet roll holder is badly placed. The taps drip. No handle on inside of door. Outside there is a small terrace which would be perfect for a picnic table and there is room for a bench beside the front door. There are steps up to the gate but no handrail. The gate is sometimes fiddly to open. There was no visitors book. This might be a Covid restriction but the information people leave about nice places to visit and eat is always useful. If the cottage belonged to a person, they would look after it and love it, but clearly no one from the Scottish National Trust has looked at it from the customers point of view. I understand that they want to preserve its heritage but comfortable furniture wouldn't interfere with that.

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• Eileen - Verified booking

  We spent three nights at Harmony Cottage in Melrose and had an amazing time but the cottage is not perfect.

  Pros: - Amazing location. Right next to Melrose Abbey and all of the lovely shops. The river Tweed is five minutes walk away. Two beautiful walled gardens within a minute's walk. A stone's throw from amazing ice cream shop :o) - Everything works. So far as I'm aware! The hot water is plentiful, the dishwasher works, the shower is okay, the beds are comfy etc. There is now working Wifi, although it cuts out occasionally but it comes back soon. - Great for dogs. The outside space is limited and all paved but its a pleasant sun trap and there are loads of grassy spaces a minute's walk away. Lots of really beautiful long walks on your doorstep. Lots of the cafes and shops in Melrose allow dogs on leads. Cons: - Parking is tricky. There is a paid car park two minutes walk away but its a bit far to lug all the stuff you need for a self catering holiday. There is parking within about 15 metres of the cottage but there are no spaces until about 5.30pm or first thing in the morning. We parked in the car park then re-parked nearer the cottage in the evenings. - In our opinion, this cottage is overpriced. Its fairly expensive but not luxurious. Furniture is functional but pretty basic. There is new seating furniture in the living room which is okay but the room is still arranged badly. Carpets are brown and drab. The hallway is dark and pretty depressing. Think a small step up from a good youth hostel and you get the idea. So £500 for three nights is, in our opinion, too expensive. - This cottage isn't loved. There is no visitors book, there are no fun extras like jigsaws or board games. Its obvious that it is owned by an organisation. It ticks the boxes it needs too, but that's it. For example; it can sleep four people and there are four mugs. Bare minimum, functional but not exciting. If you are looking for a dog friendly, town centre, functional place to stay - go for it. We had loads of fun at Harmony Cottage.

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• Ian - Verified booking

  Given that a dish-washer was provided, there were insufficient dishes etc provided to properly and efficiently use the dish-washer.

  There were only 4 of some items, and we, as a group of only two in the cottage, soon ran out of clean dishes. The cottage has a capacity of 4 people. Only 3 dish-washer tablets were provided, and these crumbled when you took the protective film off. We had to consult the instruction manual for the dishwasher, but operating it was fine. We have never come across such a badly-designed fridge in our lives before - you couldn't store much in it. The stone-flagged floor of the kitchen needs cementing repairs at the junctions - we even found an old bread crust in one of the gaps! The paintwork throughout is very knocked about, although the place was clean. The oven was not clean, but they never are in self-catering places - our ovens don't get dirty at home because we don't cook or eat meat. There was no vacuum cleaner provided. There was no comfortable place to sit in the lounge, and if you sat back in one of the armchairs in the lounge, you experienced two springs in your bottom. There was nowhere to sit in the lounge and have good light to read by, except in the daytime. There was only one bedroom with an armchair - both need one. Having said all that, we appreciated how warm the cottage was - and there was plenty of hot water. The views of the Abbey and the Eildon Hills from the upstairs windows (the Abbey is floodlit at night) were superb, and the centrality of the cottage in Melrose was good. You could park freely on the roadside very close to the cottage, and if you went out in the car for the day, you could find room in the same place later on when you returned. We never had to pay anything to park. There did seem to be a lot of passing pedestrians throughout the day, so we had to watch safe distancing a bit as we came and went to and from the cottage.

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• Valentina - Verified booking

  In general we were very happy in Harmony Cottage and would return to it should the opportunity arise.

  The positives were the well equipped kitchen, the comfortable sitting room with good wifi connection, the efficient heating system and the lovely courtyard - I enjoyed sitting out in the sun! Some other comments: 1. The gate to the property was difficult to open. I think this might be an original feature that can't be altered. By the end of our stay we had the knack of opening it (it needs lifting slightly). I think it would be worth pointing this out to the owners. 2. The stairs are not straight (ie they have a bit of a spiral) and have quite narrow treads and it was a challenge to get the suitcases up them! Otherwise I was fine with them but it was difficult for my friend who has some mobility restrictions to get up or down them, other than very slowly. This wouldn't stop us coming back through! But maybe potential clients should know about them. 3. The bathroom has restricted space because of the sloping ceiling. Also the shower screen doesn't move so the space for getting into the bath is not very big - I could do it as I'm very petite but others could struggle. And the shower which was an attachment was very feeble. I ended up with using the bath but a power shower would be much better. However again it may not be possible to change this. 4. We found a couple of slugs in the kitchen. They didn't bother us and we put them outside but others may be bothered by this. Again it wouldn't put us off returning! All in all we had an excellent holiday and I found Sykes Cottages to be an extremely efficient organisation to deal with. The emails sent were very helpful and we were clear about instructions. Well done!

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• Michelle - Verified booking

  Well situated quirky cottage in a great location for Melrose and neighbouring towns and villages.

  The chairs in the living room (club chairs) are really uncomfortable with the springs broken in one of the chairs. The beds were however comfortable so did have a good nights sleep. Few light bulbs out including the outside front door one which we went away and replaced prior to a visit from a member of the National Trust who came to see us on the Monday ( we arrived on the Saturday) could do with main lights in the kitchen and living room being replaced as the side lamps do not provide enough light for reading especially on an evening. Shower was black with mould but was easily cleaned with 5 minutes time and effort. Given the previous feedback about this maybe the cleaners/owners need to make sure this is sorted. Parking was not a real issue for us and only once during our weekly stay we were unable to park outside the property. This is clear in the booking so that was fine. We did put some adaptation to the gate as we have a wee dog that easily would have got out onto the road. Just mesh and a few strip ties did the trick and enabled us to let her out without worrying about her getting out. This said, we absolutely loved our stay and would if changes regarding the living room chairs were changed we would happily love to come and stay again.

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