Positives - A really lovely cottage in a great location. The decor and presentation is really nice - modern and bright, but cosy too. Open fire was lovely, but weather was too hot for us to enjoy it! It is immaculately clean and tidy - one of the cleanest we have ever stayed in. The facilities are better than you could ever imagine - we had a car full of things we didn't need - anything you could possibly need for your holiday, was at this cottage! Really nice touches such as the fresh bedding and towels being provided, was much appreciated, and not always the case at other self-catering venues. Also some toiletries and bits and bobs that were really useful if you had forgotten anything. The little welcome basket was a lovely addition too. The garden is large and again really well equipped. The child cot provided has a proper thick mattress and our little one slept really well in it. Decent highchair provided too. The location is great, with loads to do close by. We had a wonderful stay and would definitely recommend it.
Negatives - it's hard to criticise as it is a fantastic holiday cottage but if we were to pick any fault it would be mainly related to the suitability for young children. There are two stair gates - the one at the bottom of the stairs has been fitted wrongly so it is really easy to open, not child-proof. The one at the top of the stairs is fitted high up from the top step, so there's a large gap - our toddler (16 months) was actually able to fit underneath it so it didn't offer a great deal of safety. We spent a lot of time worrying at night that if he managed to get out of the cot then he could be down the stairs. The third issue again with the stairs, was in our opinion really dangerous, even for slightly older children than ours. It is completely open (no banisters at all) and so a young child could easily fall right through onto the floor below. There's also quite a few 'breakables' in easy reach which we had to move out of the way and were worrying about. (Make the place look nice and feel homely but not overly practical).
One other negative was to do with check in and out times. Check in was not until 4pm - in our opinion that's very late, especially as check out is 10am - you actually lose a day of your holiday. To be fair, they did text to say the cottage was ready by 1.30pm, but obviously people will be planning to get there for the 4pm time.
When it came to check out, just as we were about to leave (by our clock there was 2 minutes to spare til 10am), the owners pulled up at the cottage. Although they were very friendly and chatty, we felt a bit pushed out by this and didn't really like it. We felt there should be some leeway here, (even if it's just 15 minutes or so) rather than swooping in on people as they are trying to finish packing their car etc!
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC.
Jul 21, 2015
Hi Katie – firstly thank you for all the positive things you said about the cottage and the lovely comments left in our visitor book. However, I’m very sorry we didn’t meet all of your expectations. And would like to take this opportunity to address some of your concerns. Yes, we did arrive 2 minutes early, but we have a 100 mile journey (from Luton) to do the clean/changeover and occasionally we arrive a few minutes late & sometimes a few minutes early. However, I hope you would accept that we didn’t approach the cottage & only spoke to you when you were getting in the your car, never-the-less, please accept our sincere apologies if we made you feel uncomfortable, that was clearly never our intention. We obviously try & arrive promptly so that the cottage is ready & available for the next guests as early as possible. And as general rule, the cottage is usually ready from about 2.00pm, but as we never compromise on cleaning, we like to leave a bit of slack (and as you mentioned), we always text to let guests know if the cottage is going to be ready any earlier. It's also worth mentioning that the 10.00am depart & 4.00pm arrive are what your booking agent (Kett Country Cottages)stipulates for all the holiday cottages on their books, this is not something unique to Fuzzy Duck.
With regards to the stair gate not working, a new one is on order & will be fitted this weekend (25th July), we are very sorry for any inconvenience caused. We will also look to lower the upper stair gate. The open stairs are a feature of the cottage & hopefully once we've addressed the stair gates this won’t be an issue. PS we also have a “mobile” stair gate in the small bedroom that can be located anywhere in the cottage.
Thanks again for bringing the above to our attention. And we hope this wouldn't put you off considering us again.
Dave & Helen.
This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of TripAdvisor LLC.