My boyfriend and I stayed at the Garden Cottage in Belstone, Dartmoor (near Okehampton). The cottage is a 13th Century, thatched longhouse with original granite floors and walls that are about 30 inches thick. It has a cozy woodburner and is toasty in the daytime also, thanks to central heating. It is a gorgeous place, although the kitchen is tiny and the shower is so microscopic, forget about shaving your legs in there! It is located very close to the moors and I'm sure that many pleasant walks could be had, if one were so inclined, although we didn't go out much and preferred to stay in. One of the charming features of the house is that the whole thing slopes toward one end, which we found unique and charmingly quirky. The sofas are comfy, the windowseats are nice but beware that the bed is the squeakiest we've ever heard! lol

We have stayed at many cottages in Dartmoor and Exmoor in the past few years and we very much enjoyed our stay at the Garden Cottage but as I learned through an email from the rental agent after we returned, the owners chose to keep 50% of our $100 cautionary deposit. We were absolutely shocked to read of their claims and of course, this has tainted our opinion of the whole experience. Their main reason for keeping $50 back seems to be because they had to replace a frying pan, claiming that we had scratched it. Now, I didn't realize frying pans cost $50 first of all (!) but second, the frying pan in question was obviously years old to begin with and had definitely seen better days when we encountered it. How one scratches Teflon using a plastic spatula is a mystery to me. In any case, their other complaints included the fact that we left a kitchen roll (for the next guests) and that we had left a package of pita bread in the kitchen, which apparently, is a crime in England. Admittedly, we did forget to chuck out the pita bread package but, come on, now--$50?!

The other downside to this experience was that the towels they provided smelled so strongly of mold, we couldn't use them and the kitchen towel was the same. There was no soap in the bathroom and the shower had the weakest water pressure known to man. Unlike most other cottages, there were no nice touches provided such as wine upon your arrival or biscuits or tea or anything like that. They do charge $20 for every extra load of wood you use for the fire, by the way and you definitely will use more than the bit they give you to start with if you stay there for a week. Be very careful when walking outside, as well, as the walkway was deadly slippery with wet leaves that had been left unswept.

The long and short of it is that the Garden Cottage is a lovely place (minus the moldy towels and bad shower) but please beware that the owners could manufacture any number of false claims in order to keep all or part of your cautionary deposit and there will be nothing you can do about it. It is truly a shame about this place, as we might have returned to this cottage had it not been for these surrounding circumstances but now, we will move onto others. Needless to say, there are countless other amazing cottages in England where guests are actually treated as guests and not as criminals.








Recommended: No