“I’m hesitant to leave a bad review because the owners were lovely and very helpful but I want to leave a review that I wish I had seen before I booked, so I’m going to start with the good feedback first:
- the owners are very kind, approachable, accommodating and helpful.”
- the view was stunning and it was lovely to be so near the ducks and geese and swans everyday.
- the hot tub was wonderful! We spent lots of time in it and we absolutely loved it.
Okay, now the bad feedback:
- it’s been commented on a lot and I have to say, most of the weight of my score is based around the cleanliness of the place. I’ve stayed in other yurts before, so I know what to expect, but it was very clear that the place doesn’t get a regular clean, or that it certainly doesn’t get a regular deep clean. The tops of the doorframes were thick with dust, we needed to look under the bed to plug a wire into the dvd player and it was the same under there, plus there were several very large spiders whose webs were clearly not fresh. When we walked in, the place smelled of bleach which was fine, but as the days went on, whatever the bleach was masking came out and became very unpleasant. My partner had to put tiger balm under his nose to mask the smell so he could sleep at night. I think, given the tariff of the yurt, as standard, the property should be properly cleaned in between every visit because a consistent upkeep of cleaning would 100% improve the cleanliness of the yurt.
- the cleanliness also extends to the cooking tools: the outdoor bbq was full of spiders and when we lit the bbq, I think we may have burned a nest of spiders because there was a lot of popping and crackling. Not a cleaning issue with the fire pit but the grate was broken so we couldn’t make use of it.
- the bathroom has no facilities to hold your toiletries or even a towel rack, which isn’t the biggest issue but it doesn’t reflect ‘luxury’. Plus there is no blind or curtain on the window in the bathroom, which isn’t ideal.
- the bins are located in a drawer in the kitchen which is a few feet from the bed, so the smell starts to ripen where you sleep, quite quickly.
- the sauna gave us an electric shock, so we stopped using it. To be fair, we didn’t report this to the owners because we forgot to.
- the heater was temperamental
- there were no basics to get you started, cooking-wise ie no salt, pepper, oil etc.
We ended up leaving a day early and the owners didn’t even question it, so not sure how regularly that happens or if they just didn’t register that we were leaving early. If you’re looking for something rustic and outdoorsy, this will be perfect, but if you’re looking for ‘luxury’ I’m afraid to say this doesn’t live up to that standard, at all.