“The house is on a slope, in the middle of the forest and in the middle of nowhere.”
Next to it is an empty old hotel. There is no mobile phone, only WiFi and a landline phone that was blocked for outgoing calls, only emergency calls were possible. Making calls via WiFi is only possible if the provider allows it. This was possible for me, but not for my wife. This means that if your provider doesn't allow this, you will be completely isolated in the apartment. It is important to note that emergency calls CANNOT be made via WiFi! A high outside staircase leads to the apartment, which, thanks to the waterfalls, is always damp to wet and therefore very slippery. Now in the fall, when the leaves are on the stairs, they are as slippery as soap. Our repeated requests to clean the stairs and ensure sure-footedness were ignored by the owner. The request for a broom so we could sweep the stairs ourselves was also ignored. At first glance the apartment seems good, the view is beautiful, the furniture is solid and not worn out, it looks comfortable, but at second glance the deficiencies become apparent. In both bathrooms there is a strong smell of mold. There are no mixer taps, just two taps for cold and warm water. Either you wash with cold or hot water. The shower head is permanently installed, there is no flexible shower hose. The bathtub also has two separate taps. This is all very old-fashioned and impractical. In the room with the washer-dryer and therefore in the hallway there is a strong smell of oil that is used to operate the heating. There are no fly screens on the windows, which is downright irresponsible given the huge number of mosquitoes, black flies, all other kinds of flies, wasps and hornets, especially since there is a wasp's nest under the roof right by the window in the master bedroom. We had a fly invasion one afternoon and around 40 flies in the apartment. The mattress protector was missing on the mattress in the master bedroom, you could see all the ugly, brown and yellow stains on the mattress through the thin sheet, which suggests that the mattress is very old and has never been cleaned or had a mattress protector. In addition, the mattresses were very uncomfortable. We washed the bed linen in between and then saw that the pillows and blankets also had stains. Large pots, pans and pan/pot covers were missing in the kitchen. We had to buy a large pot with a lid and a wok/large pan ourselves and left them in the apartment. The wardrobe in the master bedroom is tiny, but at least it has doors, in the second bedroom it is just a small open wardrobe, this means that all of your clothing will definitely collect dust. There are not enough clothes hangers overall. There is no wardrobe in the hallway or at least a few hooks for street clothes. Also there's no shoe rack. The owner has put a box for street shoes outside the door and obviously believes that you should keep your shoes there. Since the entrance to the apartment is at the back of the house and therefore on a constantly damp to dripping wet slope (waterfalls!), the street shoes in this box remain damp, or will definitely be so if they weren't already damp. In the morning you can put on your damp, clammy, completely cool shoes. There are no hooks for towels and/or bathrobes in either bathroom. Not even in the two bedrooms. There are also no towel hooks in the kitchen. The apartment is dog-friendly, which is very nice, but has very light (!) carpeted floors throughout. The dog owners should clean the dogs outside with the hose and cold water provided before the dogs go into the apartment, because the carpet in the hallway is also white and there is only a dark doormat. You can't really go for a walk with your dog anywhere, there's no garden or a meadow nearby but only narrow, busy road right next to the house that you can walk along, but since it leads directly to the slope on one side and to the steep precipice on the other, the walks are no pleasure. For a nice walk you have to drive a bit before you can safely walk with the dog. In the evening/night the street is completely unlit, it is then extremely dark and it is downright life-threatening to walk along the street. Since the house is really lonely, in the middle of nowhere, you don't feel very safe, especially since the other two apartments in the house were not visible most of the time. We stayed in the apartment for almost three weeks and would never book it again.
We're sorry you didn't enjoy your holiday in Woody Bay, as our previous guests feedback has always showed they have enjoyed their time at Springside. We really wish you had read our listing properly, looked at the photos of our property and chosen somewhere else to stay. As set out in the property information, our apartment is within Exmoor National Park in a rural location. This means that it will be quiet, hilly and (particularly in autumn) there will be lots of leaves on the ground. Our listing is clear that there is no mobile signal here and we provide WiFi and a landline for emergency calls. Exmoor is famous for its dark skies and we're glad that there are no street lights in Woody Bay as this means we get to see an amazing array of stars at nights, as well as looking across the moonlit bay to south Wales. To make things safe we do have motion activated lighting covering the parking area and steps up to the apartment, but this will switch itself off when no one is on the steps. We're very surprised that you have written that your requests to clear leaves were ignored by us, as following your complaint we paid a local supplier to come and clear the whole area, remove any moss, apply bio concentrate and cut back fauna close to the steps. Our neighbour in the flat below also cleared leaves for you. We thought that your expectation that the steps should be permanently clear of leaves was a little bit unreasonable. The rural location of the apartment also means that we are not served by mains water, drainage or gas. We have a wonderful natural spring supply of water which is tested regularly by both us and North Devon Council and magnificent waterfalls run throughout most of Woody Bay. We have oil fired central heating so that our guests don't get cold and so you have a constant supply of hot water. There's no way around these things in the countryside I'm afraid. We have never actually found the arrangement of taps and shower fixings to be problematic for us, but in any case both of the bathrooms are very clearly shown in our photos, so we're not quite sure why you would have expected anything else. We haven't put hooks in the bathrooms as they both have heated towel rails and it's nicer to hang things on there instead. Whilst we're on the subject of hooks, perhaps you didn't notice the hooks on the back of the utility room door to hang your coats on? As we're in a national park we're not keen on the idea of putting fly screens on the outside of the windows. Our building is a converted Victorian hotel and changing the appearance of the windows would not be welcomed by our neighbours, visitors to the area, the local council or by us. As you didn't report any problem with flies to us, we didn't take any action on this, but as this is our holiday home we are going there this evening and will be sure to check for flies. Due to the rural setting, our property attracts quite a lot of walkers and you will see from other feedback that they have thoroughly enjoyed their stays. We have a wooden box outside the front door which we find helpful to store muddy walking boots or running trainers. Shoes can of course be stored inside and there is plenty of space at the bottom of the wardrobe or in the utility room for this. We raised your complaint about the smell of mould, the missing pots and pans and the missing mattress protector with our housekeeper. She has confirmed that neither bathroom smells, the kitchen inventory is all correct and there is indeed a mattress protector on all of the beds. We were surprised that you washed your bed linen, as full housekeeping is provided each week during multiple week stays. Unfortunately you refused our housekeeper access to our apartment to do this, which meant that we had an awful lot of cleaning to do when you finally left. We also cleaned the carpets, which are of course cream as you will have seen in the photos of the apartment before you booked. We were astounded to hear that you had to drive to walk your dog. The south west coast path runs right past our front door and there are numerous footpaths and indeed a rocky beach right in our bay. Thousands of people walk safely in the area every year and enjoy it very much.
Property Owner
