School Holiday Dates 2017

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Mr Robertson - Verified booking

  The property was a delight from the moment we arrived until we left. Amory House is located on the High Street in Southwold within a 5 minute walk of the beach. As part of that walk you pass all the shops you need to visit during your holiday as well as at least two pubs,The Lord Nelson and Red Lion, both of which are also worth visiting! On entering the house you get the immediate impression that the owners have spent a lot of time and effort making it feel homely. One of the sitting rooms has a lovely log fire and TV that everyone can gather round in the evening. The second acted as a room of solitude for those who wanted to read or do their own thing. The kitchen is well equipped and the large wooden table is a focus for meals but also simply sitting around and chatting. The bedrooms were all beautifully prepared - but as always first come gets the choice of which bedroom they prefer - an upstairs one looking out over the High Street or one of the two ground floor bedrooms which looks out over a lovely back garden. The garden is one of the gems of the property! The seats are strategically placed so that you can sit in the sun, without a wind, drinking your morning coffee or equally in the seats at the top of the garden and get the late afternoon and evening sun. There is also a wooden framed gazebo at the back garden which you can open up if the weather is sunny and warm of zip up and sit outside protected from any rain - not that we saw any during our stay! The weather was beautiful and we had a terrific week which involved various activities including hiring bikes to see the local countryside, some sea fishing, various walks and of course visiting local pubs! The restaurants hadn't yet been allowed to open up post lockdown but we had a lot of enjoyment from cooking our own meals in the lovely kitchen. Fish, which is landed daily at Southwold harbour, was simply a delight to prepare and eat. Finally, the owners were that great combination of accessible if needed but never visible throughout our stay. Anneli came by on the first day to welcome us and make sure everything was in order, leave us her contact details and assure us we were free to contact her if required, and then checking in with us at the end of our vacation. It really was a pleasure to stay at Amory House. Not only would we all recommend it, we'd all go back for another holiday!!

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• Damien - Verified booking

  Flanders Hall is a nice house for large groups.

  The rooms are all enormous and quite warm, even in winter. All three lounges have working fireplaces and the owners supply plenty of wood and kindling in one of the out buildings (plus an honesty box). The kitchen's pretty well stocked with equipment, although could do with a shelf for guests to leave non-perishable things like seasonings and spare tea bags, had to go buy a load of stuff of which we only used a small amount of so would have been helpful to leave for the next guests. Could also do with a few more frying pans, there were only 7 of us and i think we would have struggled to cook our meals if we had been any more. There's an Aga and a small conventional oven plus microwave. The internet is surprisingly good, we measured around 60mbps, although the WiFi struggles to get to the far corners of the house. The gardens look like they'd be really nice in summer, but since it was raining most of the time we didn't spend a lot of time outside. The river runs along the side of the house, which is a nice backdrop sound and there's two impressive waterfalls within a short walk from the house. There's a piano and guitar floating around, and quite a selection of music to go with them. We had no children with us but one of the three lounges is well stocked with toys. The interior of some rooms is a looking a little tired, there's a few water stains on the ceilings and so on, but nothing that's a problem. There's only one shower and one bath (in separate rooms), which might be a bit of a bottleneck if you had the full complement of 12 guests trying to get ready in the mornings. Could do with a welcome pack like most other rental homes provide, there was no indication of what to do with recyling/rubbish etc, also no guestbook to sign. Also would be useful to have a couple of keys rather than just the one, with larger groups it's often the case that you want to split into two smaller parties for the day and having only one key is a faff. Overall had a great time, definitely worth the visit.

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• Joseph - Verified booking

  We had an extended family gathering at Flanders Hall to celebrate a 21st birthday and spend some time together.

  The accommodation is spacious and very well provided for with all the amenities one would expect in a traditional farmhouse. The house is a fascinating time capsule of family history and the extensive library reflects an interesting range of interests including wildlife, the local area and enough fiction writing to keep a student of English literature happy for years! The grand piano in the main sitting room was an enjoyable distraction and far enough away from the rest of the house not to be a nuisance to everyone else! The kitchen is amply stocked with all the utensils needed for cooking and the lpg gas-fired AGA heats the water and complements the electric cooker. The dishwasher was easy to operate and reduced the chore of washing up to a minimum.The bedrooms with their shutters and lovely old washbasins were very pleasant, bed linen was spotless and the beds very comfortable. The children loved discovering the toys in the playroom (including the drum kit!) and had great fun on the rope swing in the garden! One of our party spotted a red squirrel in the grounds. We enjoyed exploring the surrounding area and the owners have thoughtfully provided good quality maps of the local area. In addition to walking into West Burton to let the children play on the swings, we visited Hawes, the Wensleydale Creamery (free samples of cheese!), Aysgarth falls, Leyburn, Richmond, Barnard Castle and even ventured as far as Harrogate and the RHS Gardens at Harlow Carr where we sampled the delights of Betty's Tearoom! We would recommend Flanders Hall as a great, relaxing place to stay with loads of room for a larger party and all home comforts. We'd love to come back someday!

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• Simon - Verified booking

  Flanders Hall was chosen as the location to celebrate my 50th birthday with 11 other members of my family.

  Plenty of parking for 5 cars+. It was perfect! We went to the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes (20 mins by car), Aysgarth Falls (30 min walk), Carperby (60 min walk) and Castle Bolton (which can be seen from three of the Hall’s bedroom windows) and a 90 minute walk. We walked to Cauldron Falls in West Burton (5 mins) and the local pub was only 5 minute walk. The Hall itself is very spacious and has modern central heating throughout - we were warm and could spread out but we ended up in the kitchen mostly which stayed the warmest with underfloor heating and an aga! The only improvements I would recommend are linked to the kitchen - we made several meals and found a toaster that only took 2 slices at a time when doing a breakfast for 12 was slow going. The microwave was only 600 W and really low down - would have preferred it to be on a counter-top and be more precise programming for power and mins. We would have preferred a better coffee machine - we brought our own capsule machine and capsules as i did enquire - there was a cafetière but not everyone wants a coffee at the same time and some people wanted decaf etc. Something to think about. WiFi was great in kitchen but with a large house and thick walls the signal was a challenge elsewhere in the house. I would also recommend leaving the welcome book out on kitchen table as it took us an hour to find in one of the Hall’s corridor cupboards. Minor things really.

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• Sarah - Verified booking

  We have just finished a week’s holiday at Flanders Hall, near Leyburn.

  It was a new destination for an annual family get-together and it absolutely ticked all the boxes! It is a lovely house, full of character (and space to spread out if needed) and the bedrooms were all really impressive. There are three living rooms - all a bit different, with great details such as a piano and shelves full of books. The kitchen is large, warm and a very convivial space - I enjoyed my first experience of using an Aga! The weather was pleasant enough to be able to sit out in the garden a couple of times, but later in the summer, that would be even nicer. The nearby walks and villages are lovely, and next time we go to the area, we would take bikes, as cycling would be great too. Jo was very prompt and helpful replying to texts with any queries and questions that we had. Because we were a mixed age-group (ie getting up and going to bed at very different times!), the fact that there was only one bath and one shower was not a problem, but it might have been an issue if 12 people were all trying to get ready at the same time every day.

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