Home sweet home...

Despite having a lovely sunny weekend in Dorset, meeting up with friends and family, it was good to be at home today and to have slept 11 wonderful hours in my comfy bed... I had a wonderful time on my mini-holiday but the accommodation was dire, and from that point of view I couldn't wait to get home! Apart from sleeping, today has been spent getting straight after a few days away, and starting to get sorted for going away again next weekend!! So today you have one of the Agapanthus in the garden, that are just starting to come into flower...

So the tale of the cottage, you may wish to stop reading here...

I'll try and be brief! 'd booked the cottage through a website that I've used successfully several times before, an agency that advertises private holiday accommodation, where you deal directly with the owner. The cottage I'd booked was called an "idyllic country cottage", it looked and sounded great!

We arrived to be told by the father of the young girl who ran the cottage that he wasn't aware of our arrival so there wouldn't be ay hot water for a couple of hours. The young girl then arrived to tell us that the washing machine didn't work, nor did the oven. The icebox in the fridge was totally encrusted in ice and impossible to open. We discovered stacks of filthy, stained and burned tea towels stuffed in a drawer. The kitchen was very poorly equipped, eg a grand total of three mismatching glasses. There wasn't enough bedding which, when requested, was as stained as the tea towels. When we went to leave the cottage on the first evening, we discovered the lock on the door was broken and couldn't be locked!!

The young girl was very apologetic about all the problems, and asked her father for a bottle of wine for us as an apology, father said "Well there's no need for that!" She did offer to put the food I'd prepared in her oven for us, but when she brought the pasta bake round to the cottage, (one and half hours after I'd given it to her, even though I'd told her it needed only half an hour in the oven!) it was burned and dried out!

I was sleeping on a sofa bed which I discovered was made for people 4 feet tall. It ended at my knees! I did manage to sleep diagonally across the bed in the end, so that only my feet hung off the end, and I'm only 5'4"!! I use the word "sleep" loosely! The family who looked after the stables, lived in a flat above our "idyllic country cottage", and on the first night they kept us awake until 2.30am walking about and talking, and on Sunday morning, their alarm clock woke us all up at 7am!

We could have put up with our Fawlty Towers accommodation if we'd been paying Fawlty Towers prices, but we were paying through the nose! It's a shame really as potentially it could be a very nice cottage, I think the young girl was just totally out of her depth and doesn't have any idea of what's required in running a holiday cottage, she only started this year. So as I said, it was good to get home...

Here endeth the moaning!!