“Unfortunately our stay at Penllan Cottages proved to be disappointing as we encountered a number of issues.”
This is such a shame as the cottage has such potential. Positives: Sea views are amazing. Bedrooms are beautifully decorated with a sea view from your bed from both front bedrooms. Lovely modern bathrooms. Everyone said how comfy the beds were. Negatives (and unfortunately there are a fair few): Finding it - Sat Nav sent us to a totally different place and the directions from Sykes were so vague that we spent 45 mins driving around Axton before we stumbled on the cottage. People who know how 'What Three Words' works may not have the same problem. Cleanliness - Fridge, although not awful, had jam marks around the door and bits of dried veg under the paper towels in the vegetable drawers. Table cloth had bits of goodness knows what, dried and stuck firmly on. A lot of the drinks glasses and a fair few pieces of cutlery needed rewashing. One of the pans was just filthy and looked like it had merely been shown some soapy water. The two handtowels provided had stains on them (looked like make-up). There were opened packets of food in a drawer clearly from previous holiday makers. General facilities - Toilet seat in downstairs bathroom broken and not useable. No bath towels, bath mat or tea towels provided. (although it clearly says towels provided in Sykes' description).The cleaning sponges provided in kitchen were not new and clearly been used a few times. Toaster did not work. One of bulbs in kitchen not working. Tin opener useless. No soap in upstairs bathroom. Heating - The cottage was cold when we got there. Lovely, large vintage style radiators falsely promised that we would soon be warm and cosy - not to be, as trying to work out the heating controls was like an episode of the Krypton Factor. Absolutely NO instructions were available to help us. Neither could we use the fire as kindling and logs had not been provided. Most places (and we have stayed in many, many different cottages) at least provide a starter set. My husband had to set out at 9pm to get some logs. Luckily we have family who live 5 mins away so we could borrow tea towels and towels from them We had to buy cleaning supplies ourselves. We later found the cottage tea towels soaking wet in the washing machine, along with a used mop cover, looking like they had all been washed together. (That little discovery actually made me grateful that we had had to source our own!). Admittedly, we did not contact the owner about these issues during our stay. We did not want to be disturbed on our long awaited holiday. We could cope with the broken toilet by using the upstairs one, we washed everything that needed it, bought or borrowed what we needed and lit a fire most evenings. We did, however, contact Sykes once we returned home and informed them of our issues, along with photo evidence. They have made the owner aware and also chased for a response and, to date, none has been forthcoming. I think we have been fair and given enough time for the owner to respond (we are not unreasonable people and wanted to give them opportunity to explain as we understand that there could be a very genuine reason that some of these issues arose). Penllan has the potential to be a totally outstanding holiday cottage but really let itself down due to above points. At just over 1k for the week we expected a much higher standard. Needless to say, we shan't be staying again. Just for information, the road outside the cottage is quite busy for a rural road and we were surprised by the speed of the cars going past. We had to be extra careful that the dogs did not get out. The gardens are secure but the driveway is not. Just something to be mindful of. Also, at the time of our stay, we could see no safety catches on the windows, and they are big windows that open wide, so just another thing to be mindful of.