Great stay for a birthday weekend
Stayed at the house for the weekend just gone for my birthday. Overall, we all really enjoyed our stay. There were a few little bits which for me, are easy fixes to make the experience more enjoyable. Wanted to write this review to answer a lot of the questions we had prior to attending so hopefully this review will help others.
Layout - The house is deceptively big. Prior to staying, we scoured the internet for photos and to get an idea of the layout from google earth. It’s a long building rather than wide and from street view, it doesn’t look very big - but it is. Comfortably slept 10 people plus 3x dogs with plenty of room and a spare bedroom left over. I’ve attached some photos from the end of our stay and threw together a floor plan to help people get an idea (it’s a complicated house to get your head around!)
The house is spread across 3 floors with the living areas and kitchen on the ground floor. On the second floor there are 4x bedrooms with one communal bathroom (the one with the bath) in one half of the house and another bathroom in the other half of the house. On the top floor, there is another two bedrooms and a bathroom. The twin bedroom can only be accessed through the upstairs double bedroom but both of them have a bathroom between them.
One half of the house is almost separate to the rest, other than for an opening on the ground floor. On the second half there is a bedroom upstairs and a bathroom - along with a locked store cupboard.
The kitchen is a good size. Had enough seating and space for 10 people to eat comfortably whilst someone was cooking so there’s plenty of space. There’s also a separate utility room on the ground floor with a large American fridge freezer.
There is an enclosed back garden with a hot tub in and an outside toilet too. The garden is decent sized with seating and room for everyone outside. The listing described the garden as enclosed and it is. It’s surrounded by tall solid walls and full size gates so if you have dogs which are escape artists like ours, you’ll be fine!
The layout is spacious but doesn’t lend well to those with mobility issues. There are numerous steps both inside and getting into the house e.g there are steps getting from one half of the sitting room to the next and down into the garden and up into the back part of the house from the kitchen. Again, this is expected from an older house.
Facilities - across the house there are numerous bathrooms. There are three bathrooms with showers, one of these bathrooms also has a bath. There is also a toilet room and an outside toilet so plenty of options in that sense.
The double/ king size rooms all have TV’s and come with full bedding. Each room has furniture in including wardrobes and drawers. The furniture is a little dated, but fits with the theme of the house really so don’t be expecting smooth opening drawers and wardrobe doors which don’t squeak.
In the living room, there are a number of sofas and chairs and there is a television as well. All the TV’s had working freeview on them with a good number of channels. In the living room there is also a wood burning fire (not that we could use it - we’ll get onto that). The living room is split into two half’s, separated by a wall. There is plenty seating, however we worked out there isn’t enough seating in the half with a TV to match the number of guests the house sleeps so one half of the party had to sit in the other room and entertain themselves as they couldn’t watch TV with the rest of us.
In the kitchen, there is a large table with plenty seats. The kitchen itself comes with various mismatch pots and pans and cooking equipment. My only complaint would be a lack of backing trays, however there is more than enough pots and pans, cutlery, plates and glasses for the number of guests and due to the size of the kitchen, there’s no issue cooking for a large group either (we did a cooked breakfast for 10x with no issues and there was more than enough equipment). The kitchen has a smaller fridge, dishwasher and a large, 5x hob oven and grill.
In the utility room, there is a large American style fridge freezer, another Belfast sink, a washer and a separate dryer. There’s also a store cupboard where all the cleaning kit was kept for use whilst we stayed. (Although could do with some actual cleaning chemicals? No surface sprays or floor cleaning chemicals available to use - just washing up liquid. There were a couple irons there and an ironing board for use if you needed it.
The toilets and bathrooms came with numerous towels which was fine and toilet roll, however feel a couple more rolls could be left out when larger parties are booked in.
The beds were all comfortable and had no issue sleeping really however a couple of us felt the rooms would benefit from having fans available to use. The house has central heating throughout which is very good and has no issues heating up such a large house (but it does hold its heat so can be a little warm at night - hence the fan suggestion).
In the back garden there is a barbecue you’re free to use, numerous bits of seating (across a mix match of different furniture sets) and most importantly - the hot tub. The hot tub is under a shelter so is covered for all weathers but doesn’t have any lighting other than the coloured lights inside the tub itself so did make its use a bit awkward during the later hours. Having never used a hot tub before, at first we thought it was broken as only half the jets worked. Don’t be fooled like we were and give them a spin. It opens the jets and they start working again as each of the jets can be turned off and on depending on how vigorous you want the water to be. There’s an outdoor toilet too which is handy to save going through the house. There are two large bins outside as well which were nice. Seems a bit overkill at first having two industrial sized bins, however we’ve stayed in houses with regular bins and a normal bin can get full very quickly!
Issues -
Generally, the trip was issue free. I did pick up on a few bits which, in my opinion are easy to address and would make the whole experience better. They’re little things so might be me being picky, but the attention to detail is what makes the difference. Firstly - bulbs! There are numerous bulbs throughout the house which aren’t working. There were 4 in the kitchen alone, and that’s not including the fact both bulbs in the hood over the oven had been taken out. The under cabinet lights in the kitchen also weren’t working and would have been helpful. There were numerous bulbs out all across the house including the back garden which wasn’t great when it got dark. For me - a simple fix, but it’s the little touches.
Bathroom locks - all the private bathrooms which would only really get used by one person or a couple had locks on which was great. What didn’t make sense was the communal bathroom with a bath in didn’t have a lock on? Again, it a big task but meant everyone refused to use the bath out of fear of being walked in on.
As mentioned - kitchen equipment and cleaning stuff. Some baking trays and cleaning chemicals wouldn’t go amiss.
Logs - a bit of a disappointment really. The living room has a lovely log burning fire. At the side of it, was an empty basket and a glove which would be used to load said logs up. For me, there’s no harm in throwing in a couple logs rather than expecting people to have to source them once they arrive (and we had a look - it’s a small village so logs didn’t seem that easy to come by)
General upkeep - similar to the bulb situation, there are some little bits of upkeep which need doing e.g tiles loose in the utility room floor, some door catches didn’t work so the doors couldn’t close properly and stay closed. We also had a bit of an issue with two cupboard doors hanging off which again, could easily be fixed and resolved.
Info pack - something that was mentioned, and not necessarily a big deal to all. Other houses we’ve stayed in come with a little folder with things to do, addresses, locations, contact numbers, restaurants etc. we didn’t find one in this house so would be a nice touch and if there is one, maybe put it somewhere on show so it’s easy to find?
Self cleaning - there are notes left throughout the house asking that all bedding and towels be removed at the end of your stay and placed into bags which are left for you. Again, not the end of the world but seemed a bit cheeky to me. When you pay quite a chunk of cash to stay, seems a bit cheeky to then ask the guests to remove and bag up their own bedding and towels.
Nearby -
The main issue we had (and we can’t blame the home owners for this) was parking. We had very little to go off before arriving so it was a struggle turning up and trying to find parking for us all whilst it was dark and not knowing where to go. Hopefully this review will help!
There are a couple options for parking, depending on when you go:
The green car park - a 3-4 minute walk from the house and on the sea front. Costs £6 for 24 hours to park and ONLY TAKES COINS! There’s a barrier too so nothing too tall but can be accessed 24/7.
At the front of the house is parking but it’s loading and unloading only and you only get 1 hour. Whilst we were there, we saw cars parked there the whole time so you could risk it, but we did stay over a weekend so come the weekdays you may get a ticket?
Sea front parking - down in the sea front alongside the green car park there is some on street parking. There are time restrictions if how long you can stay but this only seems to be in effect from May to September. We parked there all weekend with no issues as we were outside of this time so this is a good option if you’re not staying in peak season.
Castle car park - there is a large car park with no barrier just behind the castle. It’s about a 6-7 minute walk to the house but again, it’s £6 for 24 hours and is also COIN ONLY!! I stress this because we had a nightmare turning up with notes and debit cards and not being able to pay.
Leisure centre - when we looked into it before going, there’s mention on google of a leisure centre car park nearby. Although this does exist, it’s a max stay of 4 hours with a no return on so you couldn’t park there overnight.
On street view, it looks like there is parking around the house but a lot of it is reserved for residents or there are garages etc so you can’t block the doors. On street parking is difficult too as a lot of the spaces are full most of the time so it’s a luck of the draw situation.
Restaurants - there are numerous pubs and restaurants nearby. There’s one 70 yards away to give you an idea of distance. We didn’t get chance to try the ones local as they wouldn’t take bookings for larger groups (10+) so ended up going into Bangor, however there’s no shortage of pubs, bars and restaurants nearby.
Shops - there’s a handful of little shops and cafes nearby but no larger supermarket style shops. There’s a Spar on the Main Street which is 100yds away from the house and does have most of what you’d need but if you want a full supermarket, it’s either the big Tesco in Bangor or the supermarkets on the other side of the island near Holyhead.
Boat trips etc - there are boat trips advertised nearby, however the majority were closed when we went. Couldn’t say whether they were any good or not but thought I’d mention it so people can do their own research. There’s a castle you can pay to go in which is £8 per person.
Walks - there’s a short beach just at the end of the road. It’s a mix of sand and pebbles and was good for a quick walk with the dogs. It’s not a long beach mind you, so at points you’ll have to do some road walking or walking g through some muddy fields but if you’re only after a quick walk on the beach or down the pier to tire the dogs out, it did the job.
Summary -
All in all, a lovely house to stay in. We all agreed we’d definitely return and stay there again due to the size of it, the layout, the number of rooms and bathrooms and the area itself as well. Would like to see them little fixes done if we did return but we enjoyed our stay irrespective of the little snags. Not one person out of 10 people said they didn’t enjoy the stay and wouldn’t return which is good going for me!