This quaint house might be interesting with some improvements. But in these actuals conditions, it was a disappointing experience for us. We booked for 3 nights and left after the first one.
This cottage is situated in a very quiet environment in the pleasant Irish countryside to enjoy some rest. The house is big and decorated tastefully and looks cosy at the first look, but we had some bad surprises !
When we arrived, even if stove and fire were lit the house was cold : when we spoke, some vapor went out of our mouth !! You can imagine ! In fact, there is only a really old wood stove on the living room and an open fire on the room to heat the full house and as it's a big cottage it's not enough at all during cold times. The wood basket was empty when we arrived, we had to look around outside the house by ourself to find where solid fuel was store. Eve bring us an electric radiator to help to heat the house. But it didn't help so much. Impossible to heat the kitchen and the bathroom as they are far from the stove ! Really big holes under mains doors, cold wind can enter this way, it would need thicks curtains to insulate doors. Bath towels, toilet paper were damp in the bathroom as the house is cold and damp. Despite the fact that we woke up every 2 hours to feed the fire to try to have some heat during the night, I had to sleep with big socket and pullover. The morning, at 9am, we had no more fuel to keep the fire running, so we asked by message Eve were we can find more. She answered: " I really only supply a starter pack of fire logs and wood. You can buy both the briquettes and the logs in either manorhamilton or dromahair." ! She never specified it to us, either the evening before during at check-in, or in the AirBnB add.
The other bad points are:
- The house is not clean enough to welcome host. i.e. white bath mat had brown print of dirty feet on it, hairs on bath tube, really old spider's webs everywhere, floors/carpets wasn't vacuum, dusty, etc.
- old mattress in bedroom, you can feel all springs, we had backache on the morning
- kitchen is not really suitable to cook a proper meal, only ok to heat something
For all these reasons we had to leave after the first night. "Traditional cottage" don't mean for us leaving as 80 years ago. A minimum of attention is needed to welcome guest properly. We know it as we are also renting our own house on AirBnB.
During our Irish road-trip, we stayed in various really old traditionnals thached cottages with wood stove, they were all clean and we were never cold.