Simon
8/10
United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Come prepared......!
Pros: Great location for day trips to the southern lakes. A spectacular building with an interesting history (if you have time to read about it, otherwise just enjoy!) Beautifully clean, well maintained and roomy apartments and the staff were very helpful! A lovely, outdoor games area (badminton, boule, swingball, putting green etc) and overall, well maintained grounds to enjoy when the weather is good, and a large communal pool table and board games to use if stuck indoors or on a quiet evening! A very convenient short walk (or shorter drive!) to the local Aldi and M&S food hall and a pleasant walk into town of an evening, for local bars & restaurants.
Cons: Please don't confuse this with what I would call a traditional fully prepped AirB&B style set up. This is self catering and bring everything you'll need! Apart from a small welcome package of tea/coffee/biscuits and the like, nothing else is provided......so, if you intend to self cater/cook then bring everything you're going to need including oil, salt and pepper and seasonings, WUL and tablets for the dishwasher, tea towels and dish cloths or sponges, laundry powder if you might do some washing etc etc etc. It might be that I didn't read the small print but for me, the provision of a small amount of 'staples' would have made a huge difference and saved me having to go shopping on the first evening for all of the above (and of course, you can't buy small amounts!) Yes, I can understand that if you're booking for a week or two, then it is maybe an unrealistic ask, but shorter bookings of up to 3 or 4 nights would certainly benefit from this provision! Although clean and well appointed, I found the apartment somewhat austere (we stayed in Theobald). You step from an elegant 19th century stately manor house into a modern apartment with little or no character and just a few generic contemporary pictures on the wall (although I know some of the apartments have some lovely heritage features). It would have been nice to continue the history into the apartment with photos, family trees and similar paraphernalia. Each of the apartments is named after a family member, so maybe a little further history about them, after all, the hard work has been done and is sitting in a book in the lobby! Don't get me wrong though, we did have a lovely stay!