Christmas Cottages In Newcastle Upon Tyne

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Clare - Verified booking

  We are still awaiting feedback from the property manager as he promised to get back to us following our stay at the Fullerton in Belsay 4-7 August.

  We fed this all back to him at the venue but not had any contact since our departure. It is hard to know where to start: Generally Unclean - asked 3 times for cobwebs and dead flies/spiders to be removed from kitchen - this wasn't done. Badly stained furniture; Walls with obvious recent flood damage streaks down kitchen, living room and hallway walls; Wallpaper hanging off and flapping on all 3 bedroom walls ; Extremely hot upstairs due to radiators on full blast and unable to switch off (visited during hot summer period and made it very uncomfortable to sleep; Bedrooms smelt of wet plaster at night; Hot tub not working properly and was unusable for first 24 hours after our arrival until engineers came to review it then only partly worked; Boiler broke down so we had to have cold shower on one evening and had a 'maintenance' engineer visit following morning and still unable to fix the problem resulting in 2 hours delay to our day and having to shower in another property; Rug being removed from living room due to appalling filthy state and suspected fleas; No instruction or welcome pack to show where to go or what to do on the property Noise from the office which was adjacent room to the cottage (felt like it was in the same room) as kitchen/ living area; No mirrors or cupboards / hanging space in main bedroom; Automatic lights in en-suites & corridors flicking on and off all night. All in all very disappointing as this was meant to be a break away to relax. Sadly it did not meet expectation or reflect the price we paid. I'm still wanting to speak about how this can be rectified. Fyi we have never complained about anywhere else we've ever stayed but this property was not anywhere near satisfactory.

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• Carol - Verified booking

  Our stay was a three generation family New Year’s break, including two small dogs, and we chose this cottage because of the three en-suite bedrooms.

  The road to the property is a single track road, not in great condition and once on the farm there is no sign for the Coach House, just look for the porch and blue door. Inside we were initially delighted with our choice. There was ample comfortable seating for six adults in the lounge area, often not the case, and in the dining area. Everything was obviously quite new, including of course, the kitchen, but some of the utensils seemed to be cobbled together and some not particularly clean. Our biggest bugbear, however, was the size of the fridge and the absence of freezer. The is an integrated under counter fridge which in itself is far too small to accommodate 6 people but it also houses the very small freezer box. Given the remoteness of the property we had taken both fresh and frozen food with us, a lot of which ended up ruined. There is plenty of room, including a large utility room, to house a larger fridge freezer. As others have mentioned, privacy is still an issue and I would agree that outside space will be a problem in better weather, especially if you were eating outside as people walking in and out with their dogs, seeing to the horses, etc. The bedrooms were comfortable and the en-suites lovely. All in all, the property requires a little more attention to detail, and the privacy addressed.

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• Julie - Verified booking

  I will write separately to the owner / general manager as the stay did not live up to my expectations or the price tag for two nights.

  Had booked the cottage as a treat for my 60th birthday. The location and estate were beautiful. Although the cottage was clean and the bedding and towels were lovely, it needed a great deal of maintenance and tlc. Big stains on the walls (looked like bottles of bubbly had been popped and had splashed all over the walls). There were stains on the soft furnishings and settees. The other key things that were disappointing were: - turning up at 3.15 and the property was not ready for us and the staff weren’t aware that we were booked in as it was “not on the office calendar” - no guest information or welcome pack - the only instructions we were given were on how to use the steam room (never managed to get the hammam option to work). - no hot water on Sunday evening or Monday morning - so unable to shower etc - hot tub did not warm up on Saturday evening and Sunday morning so we could not use it. The hot tub was one of the main reasons we booked the property so really disappointing. Did text the GM at 8 on Sunday morning but no one turned up until 10.30 - just before we were leaving the property - the hot tub needed updating- many of the controls didn’t work, the LED kept showing error. - the garden needed lighting and some tlc eg removal of old chairs / cushions

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• Graeme - Verified booking

  Awful. Total disappointment.

  We booked a 5 day break at extra cost because we really wanted to enjoy an outside hot tub, but it didn’t work. It heated up but the motor didn’t put any hydro-bubbles into the hot-tub, so we basically we had an outdoor bath but no hot-tub. All were reported to Sykes and the manager during the holiday, but still no engineer was called by the manager who attempted to fix it himself but to no avail. The downstairs heating didn’t work, so with temperatures of at least -2 in January the evenings were freezing. The upstairs heating worked so we just went to bed early. Missing cutlery on arrival, so one of us had to eat an evening meal without a fork, this was rectified two days later but so annoying as we were in the middle of nowhere and not easy to just go and buy one. No welcome pack on arrival, no instructions as to how anything worked, not that it mattered because generally most things didn’t work. I have had over 18 holidays with Sykes and enjoyed them all, but this one wasn’t just bad, it was terrible. Avoid. Graeme.

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• Stephen - Verified booking

  House was very clean and god facilities although a microwave would have been useful.

  My main issue is that my /4 year old daughter was stuck in her bedroom until after 2pm as her bedroom door was jammed shut. A gentleman came round to fix the door but could not so they got a tractor with a cherry picker basket attached and bought this to her bedroom window. As the blinds were poorly fitted the bedroom window could not open more than around 8 inches (hid knows what would have happened in a fire) and my daughter had to squeeze through this gap 15 feet in the air into the arms of a farm labourer and deposited onto the cherry picker. The thing that was disappointing was that there has been no apology for the inconvenience (obviously we could not go out with her until this was resolved) and also no follow up to see if Hannah was ok after the incident. It almost felt that they were concerned about admitting liability!

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