“We were looking for somewhere that could sleep 6, accommodate 2 dogs and 2 cars near Robin Hood’s Bay last minute ish as we booked mid May to stay the first week of July.”
Only 4 of us stayed in the end due to other commitments. The cottage is lovely as is the courtyard and the instructions from the owners were great.
A couple of reasons why I’ve given 4 rather than 5 stars, the decor is a bit dated, to be fair the photos are accurate so not a surprise, but a change of carpet and new tablecloths would make a huge difference as well as getting rid of the random plates in the window alcoves and the ornaments, there were also a few cobwebs. We stay in cottages pretty frequently and Byre Cottage is the only time we have come across single ply toilet paper, you don’t need to get triple ply, quilted, but I didn’t even know you could still buy single ply loo roll. There were teabags, coffee and sugar which is always nice. Not so nice was the empty salt, no hand soap, washing up liquid and one dishwasher tablet for a week’s stay. I don’t mind bringing these things, but when you don’t know they’re not provided that it’s annoying. Every other cottage we’ve ever stayed in has provided pump hand soap and either washing up liquid, dishwasher tablets or both.
The hot taps in the en suite and the kitchen were difficult to stop as you would think it was off for it to then start a slow trickle and we would have to really turn it tightly to stop it. The shower in the en-suite was great, good temperature, good water pressure but would take on average 6 presses of the on/off switch to turn off which was weird.
DVD, TV and dated skybox, there’s a DVD you can ‘ask’ to watch, maybe stretch to a copy for each cottage or hit the charity shop for a few classics, I appreciate DVDs are a thing of the past but when only the TV in the master bedroom had Netflix and Prime other options are better as I don’t want to sit on my bed watching tv with my family. We bought a few DVDs for 50p each when we were out and about as there wasn’t even iplayer on the tv in the living area. If tv in the bedroom had been downstairs that would have solved it.
Some leaflets with details of local walks and attractions or a couple of books about the local area would have been nice to have. That said the welcome pack did say you could call at the house to ask for anything and replace later or buy it at the time. We accidentally left a dog bed but the £15 charge before P&P to return it to us was a bit steep so we will just buy another one.
Directions to Robin Hood’s Bay were easy to follow and it’s a nice 30 minute walk to get there. Byre Cottage is a great base for exploring this part of the country and I would recommend it. A pleasant stay but with a few tweaks would have been a great stay.
Thanks for reviewing our cottage, we will investigate the taps when cottage is empty, as far as shower goes it has an over run ( keeps going for a while after turned off maybe that was the problem, toilet rolls , and soap are provided by our cleaners we will have words with them, not sure where you got the £15 charge from , all we charge is actual postage, the dvd we lend is actually filmed in Whitby called Captain Jack , we are down to our last 2 copies, carpets are slowly been replaced, we are waiting for planning permission for the new windows hopefully you found the cottage clean and we hope to see you again.
Alan & June
Property Owner
