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Review 1459: Rural Retreats, Acorn Cottage

www.ruralretreats.co.uk

Recommended. Review by Pauline from NM

2bed/1bath row house, Minchinhampton, Heart of England

Acorn Cottage, Minchinhampton, Cotswolds, England, photo by Pauline

When

May 2005, 1 week

Location

Acorn Cottage is a row house in the center of the village of Minchinhampton, in the southern Cotswolds. The location was perfect. Minchinhampton is a very beautiful village and it is close to other lovely village and some bigger towns (Stroud, Cirencester, Bath). The cottage itself is on a quiet street just off the village square. It is a row house, so there are neighbors on both sides, but we only heard neighbors once when they were having breakfast out in their backyard. I loved the location of this cottage.

Nearby Amenities

Minchinhampton is a small village, but has two small shops with groceries and newspapers (one on the main square, one around the corner from our house, opposite the Fish and Chips place) and a a butcher. Our favorite tea rooms of the trip is on the main square - The Kitchen. There is a pub on the main square. The post office was just around the corner from our house. And there were about three restaurants in town and a Fish and Chips shop (open evenings only).

Just down the hill in one direction is Nailsworth, a good sized town with a mini-Tesco and a nice looking larger supermarket, plus lots of restaurants and shops. It was a 5 minute drive to Nailsworth.

Down the hill in the other direction is Stroud, a larger town with a large Tesco and a Waitrose, plus many shops and restaurants in the town center. This was also a 5 minute drive. We did our grocery shopping either in the village shop or at the Waitrose in Stroud.

Plus you are only 15 minutes from Cirecester, a good sized town with good shops in the center and a Waitrose on the outskirts.

This part of the Cotswolds has many small villages that have good pubs serving food and tea rooms. You are not isolated and you are not far from good places to eat.

The House/Apartment

The house is very old - hundreds of years old. One day we were standing outside, admiring it and noticed another couple also admiring it, so we got to talking and their son had owned the house until two years ago. The guy we were talking to (from Canada!) had done a lot of the renovation (and it was very well done). The house is now owned by a couple in London, but you do not feel like you are in house full of someone else's stuff. This house is set up perfectly for a vacation rental (as are all Rural Retreats properties) - everything you need and very comfortable.

The main level has the living room and a separate, large kitchen with a large dining table. The door to the patio was off the kitchen. From a landing between the living room and kitchen, you went up a set of stairs to another small landing where you either went up to the right to the master bedroom, or up to the left to the twin bedroom and the bathroom. From that area, there was another flight of stair up to the attic, where there is a small office room (desk, chair and reading chair). There is a skylight in that room. We did not use the attic room (a bit stuffy and there were bugs that came from the rafters), but worked at the kitchen table.

There is no parking spot with the cottage, but we always found a spot on the street. It was harder on weekends, when people from London come out to visit or to their second homes.

Garden

There is a small courtyard in the back, but because of the surrounding high walls and buildings, it gets about 30 minutes of sunshine per day - so this is not a place to sit outside and relax in the sunshine. There is a nice wooden table and chairs and a BBQ. We did not sit outside much because, even though it was May, it was too cool to sit in the shade. The courtyard has high walls on each side, separating it from the neighbors, and backs onto a hillside, with houses above (but they do not look down onto you).

Furnishings/Cleanliness/Living Areas

Good quality furnishings and the cottage was clean. The living room had a very comfortable large couch and chairs. It also had a big fireplace which we did not use, but there was wood. It would be a good place to stay in the winter. The ceiling is very low in the living room and the room is small, but cozy. The front door opens directly onto a small sidewalk and the street. People walking by, go right by the living room window. But, this is a quiet town, and not many people go by. Everyday at least one person rode by on a horse. You could hear the clop clop as they come up the street on their way to ride on the commons (large fields at the edge of the village).

There is not a separate dining room, but there is a large table in the kitchen with chairs for four.

Bedrooms/Bathrooms

One double bedroom that is very small but cute. There is a nice (small) window seat with a window overlooking the patio. One twin bedroom, also very small, with two twins. The bathroom is off the landing to this bedroom. The bed was comfortable. The bathroom was very modern with a large tub and a separate large shower. The bathroom was large.

Kitchen

The kitchen was large and well equipped, but the fridge was very noisy. We ended up working on half of the large dining table in the kitchen, so the noise of the fridge was annoying (I reported this to the agency). The kitchen was well equipped and had a dishwasher. No washing machine in this house.

Problems or Bonuses

When I made the original booking I emailed back and forth to Rural Retreats, giving them a short list and asking which of these places had a phone we could use with our computer. Most Rural Retreats properties have phones, but most are coinbox phones, that you cannot attach to your computer. If you book ahead, and pay a fee, at some properties, they will switch the coinbox phone to a phone you can use with the computer. As I was emailing back and forth over two days, I assumed I was emailing the same booking agent, but I wasn't (and I would have known this had I paid attention). When I made by decision, the booking agent asked me to phone her to do the credit card deposit. I phoned, but we kept getting bad phone lines and our conversation got cut off several times and she had to call me and then me call her a few times before the booking got made.

During all that, my request for Internet access got dropped. I think that I assumed she was the agent I had been emailing and so knew I wanted the Internet access. But she was not and she did not know about my request - so it never got put into my booking request. I should have realized this when I got the paper confirmation, but I didn't.

So, when we got to the cottage, there was a coinbox phone with no way we could attach it to our computers. And our cell phones did not get reception (with Virgin or Orange), so we could not use our backup plan of using the phone as a slow modem. I called Rural Retreats on the Saturday, but there was nothing they could do until the Monday. On Monday, they phoned me first thing and we got it resolved that day. They did not get into any blaming, but just figured out the situation and dealt with it. A very good resolution to what I feel was 60% my fault and 40% theirs. (Internet connection is important for us because we do longer vacations and have to work a bit each day while we travel.)

Agency and Representatives (and price)

Rural Retreats is a top quality agency for England. The personally select their properties and have high standards. Their website and catalog have good photos and detailed descriptions. Properties are furnished to a high standard and there are nice touches, like fresh flowers and a welcome basket of foods. They give you several contact numbers and a 24 hour emergency number.

I chose this property for the location. There are not many vacation rentals in this part of the Cotswolds (between Stroud and Bath). The price was high for a small 2bed/1bath cottage - £610 for the week (just under $1200) - but it is always more expensive to rent a house on its own, compared to a cottage on a farm.

Do you recommend this vacation rental to others?

Recommended. This is a perfect cottage for a mini-break or a week or two in the Cotswolds. For a longer stay, it might feel a bit cramped and they do not give discounts for longer stays. Rural Retreats properties are expensive, but are of very good quality and are setup for renters of one week or less. Many people just book weekends away with Rural Retreats.

See my photos of this cottage. See my photos of the village of Minchinhampton.

Things to do in this area

From Minchinhampton you can explore this beautiful southern Cotswolds area: Nailsworth, Tetbury, Malmesbury, Stroud, Cirecester, Ulley, and all the small villages in the area. We did wonderful hiking at Sapperton, Ulley, Ozzleworth. We had thought we would do lots of walking on the Minchinhampton Common, but we did not think the walking there was as good as we found in other areas nearby.

There are good restaurants in this area:

The Kitchen, Minchinhampton (tea room for breakfast and lunch and tea) Mad Hatters, Nailsworth (we had a wonderful dinner there) The Bell, Sapperton (small pub with top quality food, lunch and dinner)

There are also several National Trust buildings in this area and the Westonbirt Arboretum.

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

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