“Location location location!”
And that is why we chose to stay here. It was wonderful gazing at the castle through the windows on a daily basis. The town centre was easily accessible from here as well.
There was some occasional noise through the night on weekends. And cars illegally parked directly outside the bedroom window on week days. This is mainly down to the location. There's a nightclub nearby, and a shop serving takeaway breakfast. The central location near to the castle, and with stunning views of both the castle and harbour, is bound to come with a few setbacks, so we didn't mind this.
It is exactly as pictured, so you know exactly what you are getting beforehand. The style is quite Scandinavian and minimalist which I liked as it felt fresh, clean and uncluttered. It also made packing easier when we headed home. A bit more clothing storage in the bedroom would have been good, but otherwise we subscribed to the 'less is more' decor.
However less is definitely not more when it comes to information. We were surprised to find that there was no information booklet. We've stayed in at least 20 rental properties in the UK and this is the only one without any written information. As such we didn't know how anything worked: the oven, the heating, the TV. None of them were straightforward. We would never have worked out how to find and access the washer, which is shared between the rental properties and numerous shops. There's a total of 4 different coded gates/doors in this property and you're only provided with the code for key safe which cannot be used elsewhere. It feels like the owners want to say there's a washer but don't really want you to use it, seen as they don't tell you where it is or how to access it. There needs to be some written information provided so that guests don't need to ask the caretaker at every turn. Thankfully, he is lovely, and very patient. But I shouldn't have needed to contact him as much as I did.
Be warned about the 'adjacent car park'. I could not find any pricing information online in advance. It is a phenomenal £14 for 18 hours. There's no 24 hour option or weekly option. This car park will cost you a further £125 a week on top of the rental price. What's particularly frustrating is that it's owned by the same company as the property. So it feels like an excuse to extort further funds from paying guests. We only parked here once, the rest of the time we parked elsewhere. But the truth is, that's incredibly inconvenient when you have suitcases/shopping. Particularly infuriating when there's a large open space directly in front of the property and a car park next door that the property owners also own.
A deeper clean of the bathroom also needs to be considered. All other rooms were immaculately clean but on first use, the bathroom sink failed to drain due to the plug being full of hair/fluff. I freed this up but shouldn't have needed to. Also, the shower head was visibly mouldy on arrival, so I cleaned this too before use. But it still needs a proper clean as I had no cleaning materials with me. And it needs cleaning every week. The hand-wash was empty and had evidently been empty for quite some time. If it is not going to be filled up every week, remove it.
We weren't able to open the windows and this is obviously a known problem as evidenced by the air fresheners in every room. The doors were weighted fire doors, so it wasn't possible to simply leave them open. The lounge in particular smelled of wet dog when we arrived, so we propped open this door with a chair for the duration of our stay.
Also I am 5 foot 4. Thankfully I travelled with someone who is 6 foot 2, so we were able to use the bedroom blind. But I would have had no chance, the cord for this was way above my head and I could only just touch it even at full reach. Again, this would have been another call to the caretaker every time I wanted the blind pulling on or off. The blinds are great quality and very stylish but they need to be made more practical!
Overall I felt that the property had been renovated extremely well and it was very stylish. The quality of the furnishings was very good.
But it was let down by little things which had evidently been overlooked. All of these little things could be easily rectified should the owners decide to take on board the feedback from various guests. Frustratingly, almost everything I have said has already been raised by other paying guests, so why have they not been rectified?
- Victoria, September 2023