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Review 1128: Owner, Michaelmas Cottage

Recommended. Review by Kaydee from TN

2bed/1bath house in Blockley in the Cotswolds, Heart of England

When

July 2004, 1 week

Review

This was our third visit to the Cotswolds, and I had specifically targeted the village of Blockley for our one-week stay. I didn’t particularly care for the hoards of tourists (especially those in buses) who seemed to descend en mass on the larger, more popular villages. Blockley is just a couple of miles from the larger villages of Chipping Campden and Moreton-on-Marsh, but it isn’t on the tour bus route. Most of the tourists who pass through Blockley are walkers.

The village is primarily residential and bigger than we had initially realized, surrounded by rolling hills and fields of sheep. There’s a beautiful old church, two pubs, a village post office and shop (good for the morning paper and essentials), and a deli. Our 10-year-old daughter enjoyed the village playground and quickly made a couple of friends. We also enjoyed watching the lawn bowling.

There are a variety of shops in Moreton-on-Marsh, perhaps three miles away and also a big market on Tuesday mornings. For our grocery shopping, we traveled a few miles farther to a Tesco outside of Stow-on-the-Wold.

The cottage is listed with several agencies, but I had found the owner’s website and so we rented directly with the owner — Michael Gaffney. He lives in Berkshire and this seems to be a vacation cottage that he personally uses from time-to-time. He does have a local representative named Dawn, who met us at the cottage and showed us around. She was very helpful, and fortunately we didn’t need to call her during our one-week stay.

I sent Michael my deposit and final payment using international bankers cheques in British pounds that I got from my bank. You might be able to use a credit card if you work through one of the agencies.

Michael’s website says the cottage was built in 1790. It’s very inauspicious from the outside — a combination of two or three different structures. We really didn’t even recognize it as a cottage from the outside at first, though it does have an extremely impressive wooden door as well as a nice nameplate. There are no ground floor windows looking out on the street, which is good because the house directly across the street (fortunately a ways up a hill) isn’t very nicely kept. We parked our car on the street. The cottage is less than a five-minute walk from the village square and the post office/shop.

Inside the cottage is beautifully restored and decorated ... we were extremely pleased and very comfortable. The photos on Michael’s website are a bit dark and I thought the cottage was definitely better than it looks on the website.

There’s a little entrance hall of stone with a terracotta tiled floor. The skylight in the ceiling makes the entry very bright. On the left is the kitchen, also very bright, with a u-shaped workspace and a wooden table with four chairs. The backsplash has shiny green and cream tiles, and there are nice cream-colored wooden cabinets. There’s a big window in front of the sink, though the view looking out on the backyards of other cottages isn’t at all pretty — several clothes lines and a big pile of brush.

Dawn had put out a tea set, including a packet of cookies to welcome us. (Our daughter immediately devoured the cookies.) The kitchen is well equipped with attractive crockery and silverware. There’s a stove and oven, decent-sized refrigerator, combination washer-dryer (always a challenge), and a microwave—no dishwasher.

Straight ahead off the entry is the bathroom: bright yellow, nice and clean. There’s a combination bathtub/shower, and the shower was very good. Linens are included.

On the right of the entry hall is a cozy living room — a fireplace with a wood-burning stove and two comfortable couches with terracotta-colored slipcovers. There are several nice wooden tables, a couple of good reading lamps, a television and VCR, and a CD player. There is a good selection of videos provided as well, which we appreciated. The owner has decent art on the walls (the kitchen has a great print called "Breakfast in Provence") and the upholstery, drapes and sofa pillows are good quality and well coordinated.

Doors lead out from the living room to a pleasant sunroom with another dining table and chairs — very pretty. We ate out there a couple of times. This room also helps brighten up the living room. French doors lead from the sunroom to a small enclosed garden — very simple, but very private. You could potentially move the sunroom table and chairs out to the garden to dine al fresco. The sunroom and little private garden really make the cottage something extra-special.

Steep stairs lead from the living room to the second floor. The main bedroom is a decent-sized room with a double bed, a built-in closet, a chest of drawers and a window seat. All the fabrics coordinate. The second bedroom is up another steep flight of steps ... a great room for teenagers or children ... under the eaves with two twin beds and also nicely done. Our daughter loved this room. I liked the view out over the village to the hills beyond with fields of sheep — you can even see the spire of the Blockley church.

I definitely recommend Michaelmas Cottage and also the village of Blockley. In addition to exploring the Cotswolds towns and villages, we also made easy day trips to Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon. We also did two walks out of Blockley — one to Moreton-on-Marsh and the other to Sezincote House outside of Bourton-on-the-Hill.

For more information about our stay at Michaelmas Cottage and our week in the Cotswolds, you might be interested in my blog at: Week Five - The Cotswolds
Note from SlowTrav: While this cottage can be found through Google searches, it appears, it may have been taken off the market as the originally supplied website no longer works.

This review is the opinion of a Slow Travel member and not of slowtrav.com.

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Review 1128: Owner, Michaelmas Cottage

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