Holiday Cottages In The United Kingdom

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Philippa - Verified booking

  We had a lovely holiday exploring Northumbria and found Alnmouth a good base.

  Longshore was a comfortable property, but there were a few things that detracted from our stay in the house and really need addressing for future lets. - there are quite a lot of weeds and moss at the entrance to the property, which makes it look untidy and not very welcoming - I gashed my foot on a nail that was protruding through the floor board of one of the bedrooms, this was resolved quickly by Northumbrian Coast and Cottages, but nevertheless gave me a limp all week. - My husband was given a parking ticket on Saturday morning at 7am as he had not put the parking permit on display when he arrived late on the Friday night. Parking restrictions do not start until 8am, so we have appealed it, but not something we want to do whilst on holiday. A warning in the welcome email would have been helpful to advise guests to put this on no matter the time. - the shower tray does not drain quick enough. Only my mother in law used it after the first day as she couldn't get in the bath due to mobility issues. However she had to keep on turning it off to let it drain away during her shower. - There was no mirror in the shower room, this was in two halves resting behind the sink. - In the main bathroom the sink plug is broken and was left open. Although a little aggravating I didn't think it would cause us an issue until the toothpaste lid fell down it, I then spent 15 minutes trying the get it out of the plug, which I did manage, but this needs replacing. - We spent some lovely time outside in the patio area, however some of the chairs were broken, and the rail by the steps is loose and a bit dangerous. - The kitchen, whilst well equipped in some utensils, was very lacking in others. There are not enough mugs, knives and teaspoons. It could do with some more sharp knives, and I would have liked some small bowls or plastic bowls/plates for my two year old twins. The bowls were huge for children. Other things that would have been really useful would have been a fruit bowl, a butter dish, some serving dishes for the vege/salad etc. Also a dustpan and brush - As a word of caution we had two starlings in the log burner. We managed to get them out without any problems, but I daresay other guests may not have managed. It needs a bird guard over the chimney. I'm sorry to write such a long feedback, but I couldn't see where else to send this as there is no contact email. Overall, we had a lovely stay, but for the price I think these things need sorting.

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• Chris - Verified booking

  We were planning to make a formal complaint about the parking permit situation.

  We asked for 2 permits. When the first car load arrived at the house Friday evening they found one in-date permit. They phoned the emergency number to ask for a second permit and after a 15 minute wait for the call to be answered were told they needed the reference number for the property before anything could be done and the office closed at 7pm. This was about 6.30 and the our car was still en route with said reference number tucked somewhere in the luggage. We arrived just before 7pm and tried to phone but the office was now closed. Saturday morning we rang again and a helpful lady said she would contact the owner and get back to us, which she did. The owner had told her the permit was in a drawer in the hall unit. There was no such unit in the hall but we searched through the unit in the lounge where the first permit was found; there was no second permit (only old out-of-date permits and letters chasing up Council Tax payments). We rang again an spoke to the same lady who said she would contact the owner again and get back to us. She never did. We tried another call on Monday morning but couldn't get through so made the decision to drive the car to the beach car park and pay to park for the day (£3.50), rather than risk the constant niggle of receiving a fine. Our complaint is about the lack of concern on behalf of your agent and the owner. Even if the issue was not solvable at short notice a phone call back and apology would have been nice. It felt that the agent chose to believe the owner rather than us and it was left to us to find a solution. We loved the location of the house - A friendly welcoming village too. Gadgets were all in working order. Nice modern bathrooms and everything spotlessly clean. A few items needed topping up: more lightwieght mugs/teaspoons; the small bedroom lacked a table light and socket; sink plug missing in one of the bathrooms; a slip mat would be good in the walk-in shower; a bit more information about local services in the info folder, particularly bus services. The 2'6" beds were a little small for adults, were they intended for children? Hope these suggestions are helpful.

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• Tracy - Verified booking

  The location of the property is perfect and in a lovely quiet cul de sac.

  The owner could not be present at check in which we didn’t mind at all. However when contacted he asked me if we could put the bins out on Thursday. They actually get collected on a Wednesday-luckily the neighbour had put it out. I was quite uncomfortable with the neighbour directly opposite having a key to the property as they could see when we weren’t in. The ‘gym’ is pointless. The pull up bar is half hanging off the wall and unsafe. The patio furniture was in a pile outside and unusable. The toilet seat in main bathroom was dirty and broken. My daughter nearly hurt herself on this. The sockets in main bedroom don’t work-not one close to the mirror to do hair/makeup. The lights above the beds some work some don’t. There are no property instruction/welcome pack so we had no idea that the heating in the living/dining room was actually the skirting boards. The kitchen was grubby-used scourer pads and bits of ‘stuff’ just left on window bottom. The sofa in the living room is extremely uncomfortable. Both showers in bathroom and en-suite were dirty with the shower curtain over the bath needing to be thrown away with dirt and marks along the bottom. Every tap had limescale build up. We did enjoy our week away but did not enjoy our time spent inside the property. The smoke alarm upstairs is hanging off the ceiling-not sure if it functions. We did not contact the owner for any issues as we felt they could not have been resolved during our stay. The property needs a refurbishment.

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• Doreen - Verified booking

  Good points - very clean.

  Comfortable beds, nice garden. Good solid furniture. Beautiful area, with nice neighbours. 3 good Frying pans and one saute pan. Cutlery and utensils brand new. Bad points - no sockets work in ensuite bedroom. One of the double sockets in the kitchen doesn't work or the sockets in the garden nor one of them in the single room.. Only one pan, so couldn't do potatoes and veg, you had to pick which one you'd prefer. And there was no colander. One of the pillow cases in the double room had a lot of black stuff on it. The downstairs toilets overflow kept on going so the person above could not get to sleep for it. We couldn't get into the house till just after 4pm instead of 3pm. The cleaner and the owner finally left but had to call him back immediately as we couldn't get out the patio door, he came back immediately and fixed it. He then said his wife told him to cut the grass when he was there as it desperately needed done. We finally got the house to ourselves after 5pm. He did say we didn't have to leave until 11am on departure day instead of 10am. If all these were fixed then it would be an excellent house to holiday in. It's close to all amenities, superstore within 1mile, cleevlies and Fleetwood all within a few miles, and the big shopping experience at Freeport is just a few miles away too. The house is beautiful and spacious and room for 3 cars in the driveway. The

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• Robert - Verified booking

  Could have been cleaner.

  Underneath the chairs in lounge was filthy. Kids hand prints all over windows and TV. Dirty skirting boards. Empty loo rolls left in toilet. Shower head in bathroom was broken so water comes out of the side rather than the holes. Cobwebs up high. We had to rescue two birds from the wood burner as there is no cowl on the chimney. We’ve been to a property before in Alnmouth and both this and the other are maintained by Northumbria Cottages. The level of cleaning was poor with both. A mirror in the shower room was cracked, which we reported to Northumbria Cottages. They said they would contact us to sort but no one called or turned up. We were there two weeks. On a positive note, the house is great. Plenty of room, very comfy and ideally located for the beach. It’s just lacking a utility room where you can put shoes and clean dogs after a day on the beach. If the house was cleaner it would get 5 stars all day long.

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