“While the facilities are state-of-the-art and situated in an idyllic, secluded location, our stay felt anything but secluded.”
Due, no doubt to the newness of the accommodation and inexperience of the owners, we very much felt “under surveillance” at all times. We were told on arrival that the hot tub would be checked daily. We were not told a specific time however, and due to the proximity of the hot tub to the pod door our privacy was compromised several times leading to the owners seeing myself in my underwear. One of them would just appear without even a knock and at different times throughout our stay - ranged from 10am- 1:30pm - so we couldn’t even try to preempt it!
Additionally, we were rudely woken up by the owner banging on our door as they noticed another car parked outside the pod. (Our car broke down while we were staying so we had to hire one to drive around the lakes during our stay). We were told, loudly, that the pod only sleeps 2 despite it saying 4 on the website and having a sofa bed. After a bleary-eyed explanation of this (we were asleep when the owner approached the pod to confront us about this) the owner backed down and later she apologised for the mixup. However a simple question first such as “just wondering why there’s now an extra car here?” would have been much politer!
Another day during our stay, I accidentally broke a butterfly patterned plate. So, as you do, I cleaned it up and put it in the bin, and when the bin bag was full I took it down to the main bin on site. The owner then made another trip up to our pod the next day (Holly is the furthest pod from the site entrance) to say that they’d found a broken plate in the bin bag and that we needed to pay £10 to replace it. Felt intrusive to say the least that they had gone through our bin bag and found it!
So all in all, it is a delightful setting and the accommodation being brand new gave it a nice clean modern feeling. However none of that matters if the relaxation of a hot tub and a room with a view is taken away by the feeling that you’re being watched at all times. However I’m not just here to criticise, I also have suggestions for how it can be improved:
- Does the hot tub have to be cleaned daily? Could you not just have set days of the week to clean it? If it has to be daily, could you even allot an hour to give guests warning of when you’re coming (eg “We’ll be cleaning the hot tubs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 11am and 12pm”)
- Bulk buy white plates for all pods rather than individual sets for each one. With pets, children and even clumsy adults like myself, accidents happen! Easier and cheaper to replace a white plate than a patterned one.
- Let the guests enjoy the accommodation how they see fit (within reason of course!) Any illicit or illegal activity then by all means hammer that door down but an extra car on the drive? A broken plate? Just a polite question in passing seems much more appropriate and customer-friendly.
- Advertise on accommodation listing that pets aren’t allowed to be left unattended in the pod. This was only made clear to us in the arrival instructions email received after we had already paid, and forced us to change the plans for our outings during our stay.
