Guest User
January 31, 2023
Booked this holiday believing it to be a luxury lodge which in our opinion turned out to be average with not a lot of luxury included. Phoned on arrival as instructed and was told we could go straight up to our lodge, Sunflower, and to check with housekeeping that they had finished cleaning. Drove up and spoke to a very pleasant young lady who said lodge was ready and to go straight in. Unpacked and men went to veranda to set up their fishing gear, the purpose of the trip. Almost immediately my brother-in-law fell on the galvanised steel fishing swim which was extremely slippery even though it was dry weather, think it would have been worse in the wet!! Both men then decided to fish from the veranda but partly due to the extreme dry conditions the water was about 2 foot lower than normal and so found that to land a fish they had to go to the swim, consequently their lines were getting snagged together. Eventually my sure footed husband decided to use the swim and let my brother-in-law use the furthest opening in the veranda. Even he found it slippery and maybe a conventional wooden area would be better. In our opinion the veranda is unsuitable for fishing even if the water level was normal as landing the larger fish would be highly unlikely. There was also a missing glass door to the left of the veranda and the right hand one didnāt click open so we had to make a clip for it. The French doors to the rear of the lodge have no stays on them or any means of holding open and due to the windy conditions kept slamming shut which was somewhat annoying as it was also very humid. Getting back to my first comment, the lodge, although comfortable and spacious it did not have the luxury elements we usually have and have grown to expectā¦ā¦ Appliances were cheap, plastic kettle, toaster was ok but had not been cleaned out for a while. Cooker and oven were good but one of the rings wouldnāt stay lit.. cooked dinner first night and on laying the table found cutlery to be flimsy and mismatched, crockery was also somewhat marked and chipped. know this sounds picky but if you advertise luxury thatās what you should get. Tea, coffee and sugar jars were all partially filled but teabags disintegrated when we made first cup, coffee was obviously old and had lost flavour and sugar canister had dirty sugar in where someone had used tea/coffee spoon in it!! Surely these things should be checked between visits. Another thing we noticed is that the cleaning was not 100% as there were quite a few cobwebs around and lots of dust on the small ceiling lights. (Photos attached) Finally there is a manhole cover to the rear of the property which was raised and extremely dangerous if unnoticed. During our stay we observed a duck with broken wing so I text Amy to ask for advice on local animal sanctuary but was told it cost a fortune to take duck to vet and as they are not their ducks they couldnāt help. I found this quite surprising as the website suggests they are wildlife love