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Review 2153: Rural Retreats, Hinton Lodge

www.ruralretreats.co.uk

Recommended. Review by Pauline from NM

2bed/1bath cottage on a farm near Devizes, Heart of England

Hinton Lodge, Wiltshire, photo by Pauline

When

May 2006, 1 week

Location

This cottage is located on a farm on the outskirts of a small village in Wiltshire near Devizes. The location was nice - very rural, off the main roads. There is just the one cottage and it was quite a distance from the main house. The cottage is located right on the road but the road is a narrow country lane. There was some fast moving traffic occasionally, but it was not constant traffic and it did not bother you. The cottage was very private.

Nearby Amenities

The only thing you could walk to was the pub in the village (we never went to it, but it was supposed to have good food). The village was just a cluster of houses and the one pub. The nearest supermarket was a Tesco about 10 minutes drive, on the outskirts of Trowbridge. The nearest Waitrose was about 30 minutes away in Marlborough, or 30 minutes in the other direction to Bath (but I don't recommend driving to Bath for groceries - traffic in and out of Bath is always thick and slow).

The House/Apartment

The cottage is a small Victorian building that is very pretty and unusual looking. It is just inside the gates to the farm, just off the main driveway. You park in front of the cottage. There is a front porch and front door to the livingroom, but we used the back door into the kitchen. The cottage was quiet and peaceful.

The cottage consists of a large livingroom, a small dining room, a small kitchen, a small second bedroom (two singles), a nice sized master bedroom and a nice sized bathroom. You can access the bathroom from the dining room or the master bedroom. There is no desk - we used the dining table.

Garden

There is a nice lawn and flower garden area at the side of the cottage, surrounded by a nice hedge for privacy. There is a table and chairs for eating outside.

Furnishings/Cleanliness/Living Areas

The cottage and its furnishings were in good shape. The house was clean. There were two couches in the living room, a good TV and a DVD. There was no coffee table, which was kind of odd. We moved a bedside table into the livingroom. The dining room had a table and four chairs.

Bedrooms/Bathrooms

The bed was comfortable (queen sized bed in master bedroom, 2 singles in second bedroom) but the comforter and sheets were heavily scented with fabric softener. We ended up using the single comforters from the other bedroom because they were not as strongly scented.

The bathroom was nice with a good large tub.

We have not run into strongly scented bedding often in England, but on this trip both vacation rentals had it. Next time we will request unscented bedding and towels. The problem is that comforters "suck up" the fragrance, so even if the comforter cover is unscented, you are still going to get strong smells from the comforter. I bring my own pillow covers and cases to get rid of the smell from the pillows.

Kitchen

The kitchen was usable, but very small. It is in a small room off the dining room - felt like it was once a small storage area or something, turned into a kitchen. It had very little counter space and the half sized fridge was in the dining room (beside the kitchen). Pots and pans, dishes and cutlery were in good shape. We cooked most of our meals there. There was a dishwasher. There was a washing machine, but no dryer.

Problems or Bonuses

I was surprised at how rural it was. You had to drive everywhere. Trowbridge was nearby, but is surrounded by a modern sprawl (we did not go into the center).

We rented this cottage because it had a phone we could use to go online. The owner phoned and told me he had installed broadband, so we could use that instead of the phone line (the phone line was for incoming calls only). When we got there, we had a hard time getting both of our computers to go online. The owner came down to help us and we got Steve's computer online, but not mine. Steve spent several more hours checking settings and found some hardware setting that had to be changed. He said the problem was the way the owner had configured the broadband - normally we never have problems getting online via wireless or hard wired. But we both got online eventually.

Agency and Representatives (and price)

Rural Retreats is good to deal with but you don't get much personal attention because it seems like you are always emailing a different person. They don't give you recommendations between different places, but will answer your detailed questions about places. You can ask questions via email and then phone them to finalize the reservation and pay by credit card. We paid $139/night for our 7 night stay.

We had the phone number of the housekeeper for this cottage to call if there were problems and the number for the owner (on the same property). When we were having problems with the internet, we called the owner and he came right over to help.

Do you recommend this vacation rental to others?

If you want to explore Wiltshire, this is a comfortable cottage, but I am not sure if I would recommend it as a base because of the location. Next time I would either rent something in Bradford-on-Avon (a very cute town) or a place closer to Devizes and Marlborough - just because these are interesting towns. But this cottage was only 10 minutes by car from Devizes. The nearby towns of Trowbridge and Melksham were not as "nice" as Devizes and Marlborough.

The location suited us fine for the week. I think if Great Hinton had been a bit bigger with a few shops or if one of the very close-by villages had been, I would have felt better about the location. The cottage was very comfortable (except for the heavily scented bedding).

See my photos of the cottage: Slow Travel Photos

Things to do in this area

Wiltshire is a great county to explore. Stone circles at Stonehenge and Avebury. White Horse hill drawings at Westbury, Devizes, Alton Barnes (Vale of Pewsey) - there are at least 8 white horses, plus the Uffington Horse just north of Wilthsire. The Kennet and Avon canal runs through the middle of the county and is good for walking. Lots of good walking trails in the whole area. You can easily get to Bath and Bradford-on-Avon. Salisbury is a longer drive. We were there for a week and we have stayed in Wiltshire before and we still did not do everything I wanted to do.

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

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