Garden Cottage, Ludlow

My Wife and Myself stayed at the cottage for 5 nights. It was lovely. A credit to the owners. Lovely and cosy. Just a short stroll into town with great bars and restaurants. Could find no fault. Would highly recommend. Many thanks to all, Ian Parry St Asaph North Wales

We were lucky enough to have our second stay at Garden Cottage and it was even better than our last visit. It has all of the charm you would expect of a cottage in the heart of Ludlow but since we were last there it has new carpets and some new furniture. The garden is pretty and we met some very friendly neighbours who made us welcome with the offer of produce from their allotment. The cottage is beautifully appointed and very well equipt. A real home from home. A peaceful spot but just a few minutes walk from the town centre. Looking forward to our next visit.

First the positives - Garden cottage is a lovely house with characterful features and a pretty garden. It’s in an excellent location on a peaceful but central street in Ludlow. Unfortunately I felt disappointed with some aspects of the cottage. It’s such a shame as it could easily be so much better with the replacement of the furniture and a little more attention to detail. The negatives - The biggest negative for me was the uncomfortable furniture. They had bought the cheapest available to man. The mattresses looked fairly new but had absolutely no substance to them and you could feel springs sticking into you. The first night in the double I had virtually no sleep. I’d had enough by 6am and had to get up. I ended up with back pain after one night and slept in one of the singles for the rest of the week which were only very slightly better. By the end of the week my partner had back pain which he never normally suffers from. The sofa and arm chairs were also incredibly uncomfortable and even the kids exclaimed at how uncomfortable the dining chairs were! You may as well have been sat on a wooden frame with no covering. So we had to forget curling up with our books as planned during our holiday as there was literally nowhere in the cottage you could be comfortable. Also... On arrival the bath towel on my bed was wet (therefore the bedding under it was damp) and my hand towel was dirty (see picture). The pillowcases hadn’t been put on properly and one was inside out. The double bed had thin dark hairs on the sheet and one of the singles had yellowish stains on the sheet and duvet (see picture). The bath was covered in a thick layer of white powder. The bathroom cabinet was messily filled with other peoples toiletries and toothbrushes etc (see picture) so there was nowhere to put our things. There was a big basket of half used toiletries that were all dusty and dirty (see picture). There were lots of surfaces around the cottage that were dusty and there were cobwebs in the alcoves and fireplace (see picture). I pulled one of the stools out from under the ‘breakfast bar’ and it was covered in dust and cobwebs and a dead spider. There were crumbs around the kitchen surfaces. There was no empty cupboard space whatsoever in the small kitchen to put your food as although the cottage only sleeps four there was strangely enough crockery and cutlery for about thirty people. When we arrived the dining table had bizarrely been dressed with a Christmas table setting including snowflake napkins (in August). The garden was very pretty but the lawn was even more narrow than it looks on the pictures so you couldn’t do anything with it other than look at it. It also looks quite private on the advertised photo but it’s actually directly overlooked by four houses (see picture). In the folder of information the recycling info was from 2006 and didn’t correlate with the bins provided. The parking information was also out of date which could have led to a parking fine had we followed it. You are given a carpark pass for a carpark near Tesco on the other side of the town which is very inconvenient. If you want to park outside the house you can only do so for a maximum of 3hrs and you pay at a machine. You are expected to take your recycling to the bins in the carpark across town even though you’ll need to pay to park and load it into your car. After the first night at Garden cottage I was so upset after no sleep I rang Sykes to complain. They said they would contact the owner to ask for clean towels and the possibility of a mattress topper or anything else that might make the stay more comfortable and that she would call me back. They didn’t call me back. They got the owner to call me directly and although she was polite she didn’t really accept what I was saying and I felt her attitude was that me having back pain was my own problem and not directly related to the furniture which it most definitely was. She suggested that I sleep on the floor! And there was no offer to replace the towels. She said that they have run the cottage for twenty years and this was the first ever complaint. There was no further follow up from Sykes. This was the second week of our summer holiday and the first week was spent in a different cottage in the same price bracket which was perfectly clean and comfortable. I couldn’t have found one thing to complain about there. Garden Cottage has great potential but just isn’t up to standard.