Big Cottages & Group Accommodation in Truro

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Elsa - Verified booking

  This property has the potential to be an amazing place, however, it needs a lot of attention to bring it up to an acceptable standard for future guests.

  On arrival the property was 12 degrees!!! The manager kindly told the owners, but they control the temperature from base. The dining room heating did not work at all for the duration of our stay. We had to leave 2 electric radiators on constantly and light the fire in the afternoons so it was warm enough to eat in dining room in the evenings. It was too cold to eat breakfast/ lunch in there. But because the hive was telling them it was 18-20 degrees they assumed all was ok even though we notified them again a few days later it wasn't. Thank goodness we took a large supply of logs with us!!!! There is only one dishwasher, not enough for a party of 22. There is only a small double frigde/freezer. We did not have enough fridge space to put our food shop in. We had to store all our vegetables, fruit and drinks on the kitchen unit. The chiller for drinks only went down to 8 degrees. The cookers were not clean. Some pans worked on the induction hob, some didn't even though they were from the same set. The cupboard areas were not clean. The kitchen area particularly behind the cookers was dirty, the spalshback was covered in cobwebs and looked greasy, the walls in general looked dirty due to runs from cooking and more cobwebs. The cover to the boiler was broken and was not attached, this is dangerous for very young children. The hoover was fixed together with parcel tape, there was no floor brush and the mop was disgusting and worn out. Lots of long black hairs were found on the wall in the the master suites ensuite. There were cobwebs galore in all rooms and in windows with dead flies. A lot of mouldy food was found under one of the beds in the barn, some head boards were not attached and broken in some cases. Skirting boards were very dusty. On arrival we were told we had full run of the place and nobody else was there, however, the vineyard manager lives above the barn and there is no sound proofing between. You can hear children running up and down in the middle of the night, adults heavy footsteps, coughing laughing, toilets being flushed, light switches being turned off and on and you even get woken up by their alarm clock every morning before 7 and they press the snooze button so you get to hear it more then once. Photographs were submitted to the owners during our stay. To be fair they did offer to send cleaners out to clean, however my family were not happy to have cleaners deep cleaning with all our food on the kitchen units and moving our belongings. This property is advertised as 5 ticks, it certainly is not 5 ticks at the moment. The welcome pack mentioned about -we hope you enjoyed your complimentary drinks and found your cream tea voucher, but there were no complimentary drinks or cream tea voucher, however after discussing the issues found to the manager, he told us that if we go to Healy's Cyder Farm, we will be given a tour and complimentary cream tea. To finish on a positive note, the house is in a beautiful setting and has incredible potential. The games room was enjoyed by all. We really appreciated the lovely gesture of the tour of the Cyder farm and complimentary cream tea. The team at Healy's Cyder farm were amazing and so welcoming. The tour was enjoyed by all 3 generations and the food in the restaurant was delicious.

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• Terry - Verified booking

  T is a lovely house in a wonderful position.

  It is well appointed with good quality furniture & fittings and good quality linen/towels. Accordingly a stay at Tregoninny should be a lovely experience - but alas it was not! It is let down by 3 things: (1) Lack of proper management/maintenance (2) Poor channels of communication (3) A complete lack of instructions in the house. A list of the main problems we encountered on arrival: (1) No heating on in main house. No information on where to find the controls. On finding them it was clear the managers had turned on the hot water but the heating was completely off. (2) No heating in the dining room & annexe bedrooms. Again no instructions anywhere. We had to use electric heaters until heating engineer came (2 days later) & found the boiler had cut out. Why was this not noticed before our arrival? (3) On the 1st evening the dishwasher leaked. We reported it. It got worse on the Saturday morning - so we stopped using it. All week we had no dishwasher & nobody made any real effort to solve the problem quickly. That was 17 of us all over age 70 washing up everything by hand! (4) There are no keys for 2 of the bedrooms in the barn. It means they cannot be secured when people are out. This was mentioned & it appeared this had been the case for some time. Why have new keys not been cut? (5) There were masses of dead flies in the rooms upstairs in the farmhouse. They were in most bedrooms & the games room had at least 100 mainly on the window sills. Lots of "dopey" flies too which were easy to kill. Clearly all these flies started life inside the house & were trying to get out. Clearly nobody from the property managers had been anywhere near the house for some time (& certainly not on our day of arrival as promised). (6) On the Sunday the conservatory roof leaked badly. We used towels & a bucket. Friends visited during the week & they had stayed at Tregoninny the previous autumn - the roof leaked then! Clearly nothing done about it. Likewise with the nails protruding from the conservatory chairs mentioned in a previous review. (7) The main cooker didn't work on arrival. After 2 phone calls it transpired the isolator switch was off. We had hunted everywhere for it. It is on the opposite wall about 12 feet away! No instructions again. We contacted Sykes on Friday about the heating. They promised a call back from either themselves or the owners. Neither called back. We also told the management company about the problems but they said they'd let the owners know. Thankfully the vineyard manager lives onsite & though it wasn't his job he was the only person who did anything - got the heating engineer & the maintenance guys to visit. Message to the owners: We see occupancy rates in 2024 have been low even after you reduced prices. The property is very good. All it needs is a bit of TLC by addressing the 3 issues at the start of this review. That wouldn't cost very much & you'd see a much better occupancy rate.

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• Jade - Verified booking

  We had a family Christmas holiday from 18-22nd Dec 2023, there were 18 humans and 4 dogs.

  This property was amazing and perfect for a large family get away, I was abit worried about room allocations before as it wasn’t clear in the information but it worked out ok. There are 3 interconnected rooms with a living area and bathrooms out in the barn conversion and then two separate rooms with bathrooms in the annexe area at side of house. (One room with 3 single beds) the main farmhouse has a big master bedroom and two bedrooms with twin in both. Downstairs there is a double and a single bedroom. We loved the massive dining table and log fires, we were able to enjoy a family Xmas lunch together and retire to the conservatory to play games and talk. The kitchen was great, plenty of oven space. The only problem we found was that you had to find pans that would work on the smeg, not every pan would but it was fine as there was another oven we used for hob. Having the washing machine and dryer was a bonus too! The games room was a great addition and kept the children entertained! What we didn’t realise was that a lot of the land surrounding, was off limits which was disappointing. However, there is a loop walk around the property you can do which we all enjoyed, the garden is large and there are plenty of beautiful places to visit near by! The only negatives really for us were that check in is really late so you lose a day and check out is really early, so we had to pack and tidy the day before, essentially losing some more of our holiday. We were also disappointed at not having a Christmas tree and decorations added, that would have been a good touch especially as the property would look amazing with a massive real tree and the log fires in the dining hall. There are bits that need updating and fixing but you can’t complain really, it’s a massive property that is perfect for large gatherings! We really enjoyed our stay, we made some great memories.

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• Confirmed Guest - Verified booking

  The setting is lovely, with many lovely coves nearby and the farmhouse is spacious. The house-keeper Tamara and Jason the groundsman were both great and responsive. But, the experience of staying in this house was not up to Rural Retreat standards. The quality of the kitchen fixtures such as hob and oven, and the crockery was not first class. There were not enough glasses or mugs eg. The frying pans were old and damaged, these were replaced on request. There was also a sense of meanness in what was provided eg although there were plenty of logs for the fire the host provided only one lot of kindling, making it clear in notices that more kindling had to be purchased. This seemed inappropriately scrimping for such an expensive stay over Christmas. The windows in most of the bedrooms need replacing because they rattle with the winds and this kept us up during two windy nights. The one bedroom with a new window didn't have this problem. The water went off overnight due to a failed pump but we were told this was a one-off and it was switched to another pump the next morning. Overall I have given just three stars because it did feel rather like the Farmhouse needs a re-fresh and an up-scale in the quality of provision. This is the first time I have not given a RR stay five stars.

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• Sophie - Verified booking

  This was a brilliant house for our four families and especially as my daughter is an electric wheelchair user .

  The house was fully accessible at ground floor level and had a choice of wet rooms in the barns and annex ( though two of the showers probably needed looking at as you couldn’t have the hand held shower on without the overhead shower going on as well - the very friendly maintenance man came quickly but sadly couldn’t rectify the problem.) Loads of space, fabulous dining room, big kitchen , great garden for playing croquet, rugby etc. All the bedrooms were a good size and the master bedroom and bathroom were fabulous. There was more space than indicated from the description , for example there was no mention of the small sitting room with log burner in the barns . A couple of suggestions - a floor plan or labelled photos on the website of which bedroom was which for planning purposes of who sleeps where would be so useful. It would also be nice to have a visitors book so other families can make recommendations of places / beaches / pubs to visit. Some of our party visited Healeys Cider farm and really enjoyed their tasting session. We visited a couple of beaches, one better for access for my daughter than the other. Lovely walks and our dog loved it there. We will definitely look to rebook.Thank you for a lovely stay.

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