Durham Holiday Cottages

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Vani - Verified booking

  Overall, this is an excellent cottage with gorgeous views, both from the living room and the kitchen (hello alpacas!

  ). It was a great base for a week in Sep 2024 when we were very lucky to have very hot, sunny and summery weather! Do recommend the Stanhope Agricultural show (and others in the area if you visit in September). We also really appreciated the YouTube video showing how to approach the cottage - no issues at all for us with good parking for 2 cars (i20 and a Yaris). Top tip: read the manual provided to know how to switch the oven on! We appreciated the different coloured towels for the different rooms, and loved the main shower. The kitchen is much larger than it appears and is a wonderful place to hang out with your family and friends. We loved the American fridge freezer! We loved the size of the TV though worth noting that we could not find live TV channels (guessing that it is due to the rural location?). Good selection of games and books too. The niggles we experienced are easily resolvable with a higher standard of pre-arrival housekeeping. We found white dog hairs on the dining room chairs, the freezer drawers were not pristine (unlike the fridge) and the oven was not clean, meaning it was very smoky. We also experienced some toilet roll anxiety as we were left with only 4 for a party of 5 for an entire week, so we would recommend more being left! Another minor annoyance is that the plates/bowls etc. do not easily fit the dishwasher. Nothing worth contacting Sykes/owner about during our holiday but wanted to mention this as an easy area for improvement. I would have no hesitation in booking again - the fire was a lovely treat on the cooler nights.

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• Rachael - Verified booking

  This is a beautifully presented cottage in a quiet area away from it all.

  Great things provided by the owners such as fairy liquid, Andrex toilet tissue and other homely bits and pieces. Fantastic welcome tray with wine too! The heating was just right and we didn't need the fire as it was so cosy. The downside, if we're being hyper critical is the lack of parking space and the really uncomfortable wooden frames on the sofa, in all honesty we only noticed this as we had 4 days of bad weather so were inside more than out. Top tip would be to pull in on road and get key, then open up back door to unload things. Rather than off bridleway as this has a weird camber on it and my Toyota yaris got caught at the front! Scrapping it to get off. There's parking behind garage and my car fitted on, just. The road is not overly busy, except first and last thing. Easy to reverse back out of parking space onto it. There's a little bypass over through Cowshill so if you face wrong way just drive around. We have had a wonderful few days here and would go back, hopefully in the dry so we could see the stars!!

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• Dawn - Verified booking

  The overriding issue was that Sykes added an extra £140 on the original booking when we had to defer the holiday due to unforeseen circumstances which meant that Hawthorn Cottage was overpriced for the accommodation on offer.

  The “free parking” was on the opposite side of a busy main road and it wasn’t always possible to park close to the property. Transferring suitcases became a challenge to say the least. The cottage itself was clean and tidy but very small and the lack of privacy both in the front room and the backyard could have been improved upon. The provision of logs for the burner was welcome but a set of saucepans and a bread knife would have been even more so. The packet of biscuits as a welcome pack was pleasant but to be honest, after a long drive, a small bottle of milk plus some teabags would have been more useful. Judging from the comments of other guests in the visitors book, we are in the minority but based on our experiences of many other holiday rentals Hawthorn Cottage was disappointing, sadly; especially in view of the overall cost of the holiday.

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• Dawn - Verified booking

  The overriding issue was that Sykes added an extra £140 on the original booking when we had to defer the holiday due to unforeseen circumstances which meant that Hawthorn Cottage was overpriced for the accommodation on offer.

  The “free parking” was on the opposite side of a busy main road and it wasn’t always possible to park close to the property. Transferring suitcases became a challenge to say the least. The cottage itself was clean and tidy but very small and the lack of privacy both in the front room and the backyard could have been improved upon. The provision of logs for the burner was welcome but a set of saucepans and a bread knife would have been even more so. The packet of biscuits as a welcome pack was pleasant but to be honest, after a long drive, a small bottle of milk plus some teabags would have been more useful. Judging from the comments of other guests in the visitors book, we are in the minority but based on our experiences of many other holiday rentals Hawthorn Cottage was disappointing, sadly; especially in view of the overall cost of the holiday.

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• Susan - Verified booking

  A roomy, very comfortable and homely stone cottage high up in the north Pennines.

  This was Perfect for a break from it all and very much appreciated by myself and two grown up sons. Could just about fit my Honda jazz behind the garage which was useful. We found the house was very warm and definitely didn't need the heating on and the log burner was useful at night. it is blustery and pretty exposed up there so nice to have that warming comfort. The shower was good too - powerful and it was fab to have a soak in the bath after a day out walking (don't have one at home!). Some cottages can be short of living space but this was very spacious with comfortable sofas and a well equipped and decent sized kitchen. Thankyou Andrew for your helpfulness /welcome and hospitality in trying times for everyone.

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