“Betamere had some nice features such as the garden and a well stocked kitchen and comfortable bed.”
However, disappointingly there was a poor level of cleaning and maintenance throughout. Some of these issues have been raised by other guests’ months ago and still not actioned/rectified. Very disappointing.
Cleaning issues included food under dining table and round room edges; all ledges and edges dusty and grimy; thick multiple cobwebs across a whole corner of the bedroom (clearly been there a very long time), cobwebs above bed and over lights, and throughout property in abundance – all of which were unmissable. All the soft furnishings were in desperate need of cleaning too. Also sorely in need of redecoration – grubby, marked wallpaper, paintwork chipped and grimy; mould in bathroom; all window frames in a shocking state of disrepair (see below). Six light bulbs either blown or missing; horribly grubby, torn, mouldy window curtain in bathroom. Betamere is in desperate need of a deep clean.
Worse still, on arrival evening suddenly lost all power to the sockets including oven and fridge freezer with my week’s worth of food in it. Had to ring the emergency line. Tried to find fuse boxes to see if the switch had tripped for some reason. We thought fuse boxes were in the locked cupboards but eventually found them in the cupboard marked bird food! (Incidentally, no bird food). Emergency line arranged for maintenance to come on the Sunday to check all the electrics were safe. No one showed up! Had to ring emergency line again Sunday evening. So two nights worrying if the electrics were a fire hazard. Meanwhile realised that you could open the bedroom windows but not shut them again. They are two very thin 5ft pains of glass in thin, warped and corroded metal frames (as were all of them). Having injured myself in an effort not to break the window whilst trying to shut it, this was something else as well as the no-show for the electrics to ring the emergency line about.
Other issues included no hot water initially, curtain pulley by TV too stiff to be able to close curtains fully – 2ft drafty gap left was worsened by windows not closing properly; kitchen cupboard hanging off – again unmissable – why wasn’t this fixed either? Wall lights in lounge constantly fluctuated up and down in level of light – had to switch them off as headache inducing. No ceiling lights and one of 2 table lights didn’t have a bulb either!
Different cleaner showed up on Monday and cleaned it properly as far as was possible. Maintenance fixed some things but not others. I appreciate it’s an older building, but there’s no excuse for poor cleaning and maintenance.
I’m hoping that better levels of cleaning and maintenance will ensue from my feedback and that future guests will benefit from me having wasted 1.5 days and two evenings of my precious holiday trying to get these issues fixed. It’s a great shame, as this could be a lovely property if there was less apathy and complacency and it was cleaned and maintained properly. If that happened and could be assured, I might even consider staying again.
I’m still waiting for a follow-up contact from Sykes following my emails to them.
- Carolyn, September 2025
