Corner Cottage at Brackenthwaite Holidays, Arnside

We originally was going to book this cottage on cottages.com, the price was £665 for the week but it wouldn't allow me to put a Friday to Saturday booking in so I emailed directly. Mathew came back with a price of £774.86. When I pointed out the price I'd seem on cottages.com he said they like to play around with the prices. I personally know someone who has a few properties on that site and they never change the price without permission. However Mathew did honour the price of cottages.com. The cottage itself is lovely. Upon arrival we were very confused though. There is a porch area to the right was our cottage and to the left was another cottage. But outside our cottage on both sides of the door were coat pegs and then below the right hand side one was a boot rack. Above the boot rack there were coats and jackets already hanging there. We soon found out these coats were the 3 ladies staying in the cottage opposite us. Really can't work out why the coat pegs weren't put in the same side as their cottage. There is enough space if the pictures are removed. The ladies had horses, which meant they were coming from the stables, trailing hay and other mess with them, into the porch at our side to hang coats, then over to their side to take boots off. This meant there was a constant stream of hay right outside our door. Of couse this was then trailing into our cottage, and we were expected to clean the cottage before leaving. This felt very unfair as we were not the ones making the mess. But when the ladies left the owners didn't bother to sweep the hay out of the porch, it was just left there, for us to continue trailing into our cottage. It has nice quality furnishings along with nice pale grey carpets throughout. However I would not say it is dog friendly. Compared to other cottages I've stayed in. To be dog friendly I would expect to see laminated floors not pale grey carpets. We can all wash our dogs down after a particular muddy walk, but then our dogs go inside and shake themselves causing water to go everywhere, possibly with residual mud. What if I miss a bit of mud, it's on that pale grey carpet for sure! Or what if one of my dogs was unwell and sick on the floor? The BBQ they supplied was a rusty old thing that I wouldn't cook my dogs food on (if I had to cook it) never mind my food! The cottage also comes with a book of instructions for the occupant. Not instructions for the appliances as you'd expect, but instructions to clean and sanitize before leaving to help the cleaning team out! I would've been happy to leave the cottage in a clean and tidy state, however this is our instructions but I found a ring on the bathroom window sill where clearly there had been an electric toothbrush! It's clear the last occupant didn't clean and sanitize very well. Your also instructed to be mindful of the electric consumption with the electric radiators in the cottage. Didn't I just pay a lot of money for the electricity to be included? As well as for the "cleaning team" to do their job? Your instructed to make sure you keep your dogs on a lead and any mess to be picked up, which is fair enough. However when we returned from a walk we found one of the owners dogs had been in our semi private area and left poo there. I pointed it out to the owner who picked it up but with no apology at all. In the exercise field, which is great, we also found poo after their dogs had been in there. We saw the owners mother in law, mentioned it to her. She said oh yes I will have left it there. Why is this OK? Surely when you have dogs you should be cleaning up after them whatever. We couldn't get the dish washer to switch on so messaged to ask for help. Within a few minutes the owners knocked on the door, which was superb. But then told us not to use any other temperature other than 30 degrees. I was shocked by this as I really do like to make sure the dishes I use clean and feel using a higher temperature is definitely more hygienic. What came across from this was that they were bothered about the electricity costs. A while later we felt cold, so not having electric radiators at home I looked for instructions for turning them up. None to be found. I didn't feel I wanted to ask for help again for fear of being told not to have it above a certain temperature. So I ended up finding instructions on Google, which I don't think we should have needed to do. Surely we should've been left with instructions. We also had instructions to strip only the beds we had used and place the linen in the bath. Surely we shouldn't need to be stripping beds while we are on holiday? There was no hot water on demand. The water heats up over night (still has an old fashioned water tank) so if you run out of hot water you have to press a boost button and wait for the water to get hot again. Not great, I really think in this day and age it should be water on demand for a holiday let. There is a small TV in the lounge area and then a huge TV in the master bedroom and no TV in the 2nd bedroom at all. Our instructions told us they were smart TVs and already set up on the Internet. One night the TV in the bedroom wouldn't work, it said there was no Internet connectivity. We messaged the owners. They told us they couldn't help us tonight and said goodnight. So we felt extremely dismissed by this. They live on site just across the yard of the farm and this was expressed in our instructions, but they wouldn't come to our aid regardless. We paid a high fee for the use of this cottage and to be dismissed was awful. I could understand if it had been 11pm but since it was only 9pm this was very unfriendly. This was the last straw for us. We packed up and left early the next morning. Not very long after arriving home we received a message from the owners. They told us they had been into the cottage and the TV was working fine. At this point they didn't know we had left. Therefore had entered a property we were renting for a week without prior arrangement or notice they were going to enter the property. We feel this is a complete violation. One of us could've been sleeping in bed, in the shower or anything. This really is unacceptable. All in all it has been a very disappointing experience. We paid a lot of money for this holiday. We paid for 7 nights and only stayed for 3 nights due to the poor customer service the unreasonable expectations from the owners. The last time we had a holiday rental was in Whitby at Abbey View. There was a truly welcoming house, very high end property and very dog friendly with a fantastic host.On the other hand we found these owners very un welcoming, demanding of what we could and couldn't do and it felt like they were only bothered about the money and not delivering good customer service. We are very sad our holiday was cut short but the stress of staying on holiday there was too much. Our next holiday is also in the Lakes in another rental property. We have paid a lot less and appear to be getting a lot more for our money. It remains to be seen what the customer service is like but hopefully much better than we have just experienced at Corner Cottage. Today is Saturday checkout day. As i type this there has been no contact from the owners. Nothing at all to ask if we are ok, since we've been missing from the property since Tuesday morning. They must have noticed the lack of the car if nothing else. This just confirms their lack of customer service or even human concern. It really was the most unwelcoming place I have ever come across I really do hope the owners change their attitude towards guests in future and realise they are paying a lot of money for a stress free break and get rid of all their unreasonable restrictions, and start having some semblance of customer service.