Holiday Cottages With Hot Tubs In Richmond

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Sara - Verified booking

  We have rented holiday homes throughout the uk for several years and are a large family group of 4 generations.

  Our annual holiday together is important and we spend a significant amount of money and time in planning to make the most of the 7 day stay. Stepping Stones unfortunately ranks as the worst property we have stayed in with an owner apparently disinterested in his guests comfort and wellbeing. He contacted me the day prior to arrival to inform me that the dishwasher wasn’t working and that an engineer would attend the Wednesday- day 6 of our 7 day holiday. Also that a gas engineer would attend to service the boiler during our stay. Both of the above are unacceptable to us we expect the property to be fit for purpose and for routine maintenance to be carried out at vacant times eg change over days etc. Two of our party members are extremely clinically vulnerable and we had all taken great care to isolate prior to the holiday to keep each other safe -allowing strangers into the property was an unnecessary risk. The reality was the engineer attended unmasked and although he was relatively unobtrusive and polite he was in the property for sometime. The dishwasher repair never happened in our stay and this was never clarified by the owner as he failed to communicate at all once we had questioned the problems. The property itself is spacious and offers many potential benefits for a group such as ours eg games room, gym, sauna, hot tub however it is so poorly maintained and unclean this overrides any benefit. As I explained to the owner of the cleaning company on day one we can accept a house being shabby in its decor even but being unclean and poorly maintained is unacceptable and more so considering current covid precautions. He attended daily at random times to ‘check’ the hot tub accessing through the main house again unmasked and without any awareness of how intrusive this was for us. On arrival externally the property looked poorly maintained, shabby frontage, dirty web strewn windows, rickety key safe which took several attempts and manoeuvring to function. On entry the main staircase which is the first feature as you enter the property with the sun shining had hand marks clearly all the way up the handrail and the stairs had dust piled all the way up the skirtings. This was my immediate view of an empty ‘newly cleaned’ house. This theme unfortunately was consistent throughout and too numerous to discuss in detail but in summary: Unclean chipped crockery in the cupboards Dirty cups in a non working dishwasher Cupboards littered with food and condiments left by previous occupants over a protracted time as half of it was out of date. Coffee machine completely blocked with coffee grounds and warning lights displaying that cleaning was overdue. Discarded socks under one of the beds Detritus in the drawers and wardrobes throughout. Generally unclean bathroom in the cottage with cobwebs in all the corners, badly stained ceiling and grime on the shower screen. Unkempt garden with rubbish strewn round the edges and the only furniture being benches and a table. Grime and hairs all around the rim of the Hot tub. Unusable dishwasher which we were aware of but no provision of a draining rack to facilitate washing dishes by hand (which for 11 people is never ending). Fridge freezer was a fabulous size however the bottom drawer of the freezer wouldn’t open which meant we had insufficient capacity for our frozen foods. Badly marked conduction hob which turned itself off frequently whilst cooking and oven indication lights not functional so very difficult to know what it was doing. Poor provision of glasses, cutlery, baking trays, mixing bowls and serving dishes all of which we bought. Stepladders left randomly in the study Lamps and main light non functional in kitchen and main lounge. Outer gate to cottage broken latch which resulted in the gate being damaged during the high winds after banging continually all night Dysfunctional smoke alarm on the ground floor of the main house randomly alarming for no reason and eventually wouldn’t stop so we had to remove the battery. The small bedroom in the cottage is so small and poorly furnished it barely counts as a bedroom Despite all of the above we endeavoured to make the stay as successful as able and did enjoy the snooker room and the village setting but we were all relieved to get back to the comfort and cleanliness of our respective houses. I am baffled why nobody has commented on any of these issues in previously published reviews. We have always booked our holiday houses through Sykes as we believed we could rely on the standards being as stated and the quality reflected in the price. We would be reluctant to do so in the future.

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• Sonja - Verified booking

  Overall we had a nice stay.

  I think the owners have become complacent, the imagoes on the listing don’t portray the property accurately. The property is tired and needs some attention. In the first morning I did contact the owners who were very responsive and sent a handyman very quickly, I had reported that the heater in the attic room was broken, the shower in the en-suite didn’t drain, the kettle needed to be condemned and that a number of door handles kept coming off. The property is lovely and quite old so this needs to be taken into consideration, however this doesn’t excuse paint needing to be touched up in many places and tired furnishings. The separate games room is great and nice and warm. The advert lists a sauna and a gym, both of these were not operational, the sauna had cables in it and the gym’s floor had been taken up so was not usable and unsafe. I didn’t see anyone come to treat the hot tub with chlorine whilst we were there, they may have done but I doubt it. We have been to many houses as this is an annual trip, it was disappointing, there was no welcome pack, or pack of information about the local area or how to use things in the house (if there was one we didn’t find it). The DVD player in the small living room didn’t work properly, Indiana Jones is in it on repeat but it doesn’t play. There are a few nails stickling out of floor boards which are dangerous to bare feet, definitely recommend wearing slippers. There was no kindling for the fire. I’m not sure how often Sykes Cottages visit the properties they are promoting but looking at this one I think it needs to be more often as this experience has not encouraged us to use Sykes again for our trip next year. It is also important that visitors report things that are wrong as I imagine most of the time it is the cleaners who see the houses, not the owners. I do not feel we have received value for money.

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• Paul - Verified booking

  The house is amazing!

  The bedrooms are well presented and spacious, with comfortable beds. The kitchen suited our needs. We didn’t spend much time, if any, in the living rooms as by far the best aspect of this house is the games/snooker/bar annex. This was ideal, especially in the current climate. Somewhere to spend time with friends without the hassle of booking tables. We did ‘borrow’ the tv from one of the living areas which, along with an Amazon Firestick (suggestion for the owner), meant we could all gather and play snooker, games, chat and have a few beers at the bar in an ideal setting. The gym was mainly used by the kids and they enjoyed having another place of entertainment. The hot tub was warm and clean and large enough to fit 4 adults and 3 kids. The sauna was also a great facet, being able to exit the hot tub, walk through the gym and straight into the sauna was ideal. We ventured into the Bay Horse for dinner on one of the evenings. This is pretty much next to the property and a nice place to visit. The food was typical pub fare and recommended. The surrounding area is great for walks. Access to a walk along the river Swale takes 10 minutes with a feeding stream directly over the road from the property with families gathering on one warm day for picnics and a drink from the pub. A co-op is a similar distance away, along with take-always (Chinese and Pizza) and coffee shop. I cannot recommend this property highly enough.

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• Jennifer - Verified booking

  We were disappointed by Stepping Stones.

  It's in a lovely location and is a big house but it seems to have fallen into a bit of disrepair. Some things that were broken or not working were: dishwasher (a handyman came to look at this while we were there but could not fix it), sauna (not working), gym equipment (only rowing machine worked properly, the electrics on the cross-trainer didn't work and there was a pedal missing from the bike), oven (seal broken so slow to cook things, particularly if not on top shelf), lots of the crockery was chipped, there were large nails sticking up out of the floor, the floorboards were completely broken in a couple of places meaning it was unsafe. I wouldn't say this is a safe place to go with small children - we had to do things like put a chair over sticking out nails and put blankets on the floors where the floorboards were broken to try to make it as safe as possible. The owner responded to my message about the dishwasher (see above) but not to a subsequent message I sent about some of the other things. And there weren't any instructions for anything, so we didn't know things like what day bin day was, what to do with the recycling, how to work the heating (it was cold in the main house a lot - one night I slept with a tracksuit on over my pyjamas). The price we paid led us to think this would be a luxury stay, and it really wasn't due to all the issues mentioned above. We feel really let down.

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• Scott - Verified booking

  This is a wonderful property set in a beautiful quaint village location with a lovely picturesque stream running in front of the property.

  The bedrooms were very spacious and light and the beds and bed linen were particularly very comfortable. There were plenty of crockery, cutlery and glassware to cater for large groups and there was plenty of fridge space, although we did have a slight issue with the main fridge in that it wasn't working properly initially. The dishwasher was also not working at all the whole weekend which wasn't ideal given our group size was 12. The games room was great, the snooker table was excellent but the table football has seen better days and there were balloons and confetti left over from a previous gathering. The hot tub was a great addition and was used a few times over the weekend. There was private off road parking for four cars plus another couple of spaces directly out the front. The village pub is practically next door. Although the style and design of the house was very nice and sympathetic to the period property, I would say that it was a little tired in places but it is such a large property, it would be difficult in keeping it looking pristine. However, overall, it was ideal for our family get together.

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