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Review 2154: Rural Retreats, Jasmine Cottage

www.ruralretreats.co.uk

Recommended. Review by Pauline from NM

2bed/1bath row house in Windrush, Cotswolds, Heart of England

Jasmine Cottage, Windrush, photo by Pauline

When

May 2006, 2.5 weeks

Location

Jasmine Cottage is the end house in a short row of houses on the edge of the village Windrush. It is on the main road through Windrush, but there is hardly any traffic. Windrush is a beautiful Cotswolds village with a lovely church.

For me there were two problems with the location of this cottage, both of which we knew about before booking.

1. Windrush is a small village with no shops. There is a pub in the next village, about a mile away. There are shops, restaurants, etc. in Burford, a 7 minute drive away. I missed being in a town where you could walk out for fresh bread in the morning or for a paper.

2. The A40 is a main highway going through the Cotswolds from Oxford to Cheltenham. It is about a mile from Windrush and you can hear the highway from the cottage. You do not see the highway from the village, and the village is beautiful and peaceful, but you can hear it (it is not overwhelming, just a quiet background noise). Being near the A40 is great for getting around and it is not that busy – it is only one lane in each direction.

Nearby Amenities

There are no shops or pubs in Windrush, but there is a good local pub one mile away; The Fox Inn, Great Barrington. We did not go to it, but it is recommended in the book "Forty Classic Cotswolds Pubs", by G.M. Ball, 2005.

Burford, a 7 minute drive away, is an lovely Cotswolds town with several pubs, tea rooms, restaurants, and some good food shops. Witney is a larger town, about 20 minutes away, with a Waitrose (supermarket). In the other direction, Stow-on-the-Wold is a 15 minute drive (take a small road north from the Barringtons to the Rissingtons, then onto the main road), with a Tesco (supermarket). Morton-in-Marsh is only 5 minutes past Stow. From Windrush it is 30 minutes to Broadway and about the same to Chipping Campden.

It is about 30 minutes to Cirencester (maybe less) where there is another Waitrose. Cirencester is a great town – lots of shops and restaurants, plus great public parks. 20 minutes to Chipping Norton, another good sized Cotswolds town (similar in size to Stow).

You are close to most of the eastern Cotswolds in Windrush, but I felt like we were doing bit too much driving each day. One of the reasons for this trip was to explore the eastern Cotswolds and we were able to do that from this cottage.

The House/Apartment

You enter the house through a low door and into a nice sized entryway with a desk. I worked at this desk. The chair was a bit rickety and uncomfortable (and there were none any better that I could substitute), but it made a nice enough work corner. From the entry way there are stairs up to the two bedrooms and bathroom, a door into the living room and a hall into the kitchen.

The living room is a good size with low ceilings (6 feet), a fireplace, two loveseats, small TV (12" - almost too small to be usable and did not get great reception) and VCR, two windows to the street and one to the back yard, low carpet. Shelves of books and videos, games, coinbox phone. Nice furnishings.

The kitchen is a nice size with a small table and chairs in the corner for eating at.

Upstairs the master bedroom is beautiful and large with a queen sized bed. There is a window onto the street and one onto the back yard. There is also a small second bedroom with a single bed and a bathroom with tub, hand shower (not suitable for having a standing shower), toilet.

There is no washing machine or dryer with this house. The house book recommends a laundry in Witney which we used once, but we found a better laundry in Bourton-on-the-Water – less expensive and closer (Mary’s Laundry, High Street, one block west of the main shops area, tel: 01451-820808, Monday to Friday, 8:30am – 5:30pm, Saturday, 8:30am – 2:00pm, we had two medium loads done for £12.00 (washed, dryed and nicely folded).

Garden

Glass French doors open from the kitchen to a small paved patio with table and chairs. From there, a few steps take you up to a nice backyard. It is not private because it is right beside the neighbor's yard with only a little bit of fencing between and there is a house in the back, at the end of the yard. Since we were there in the wettest May since 1983 (!!!) we did not sit outside much. I did get to meet some of the neighbors because I was frequently standing outside the front door trying to get some reception on my cell phone. I tried 3 different providers (Vodafone, Virgin, Orange) and none got reception in the house and all got weak reception outside.

Furnishings/Cleanliness/Living Areas

One living room couch was uncomfortable, the other was comfortable. The dining chairs were a touch rickety. The bed was comfortable. The house was clean. There were enough chairs for four people.

Bedrooms/Bathrooms

Good sized master bedroom with a high ceiling. The second bedroom was very cute - perfect for a child (single bed). The bathroom was nice but there was a problem with the floor tiles - they moved when you walked on them (probably just need to be reglued). Two big warnings beside the toilet paper holder about not putting anything down the toilet or a tradesman or engineer would have to be called in made me a bit nervous using the toilet, but everything flushed fine in the time we were there.

Bedding and towels were heavily scented with fabric softener - see the problems section.

Kitchen

The kitchen is very nice with a 4 burner electric stovetop, oven, mid-size fridge with freezer, half size dishwasher, small table with four chairs in a corner, glass French doors to the back yard and a small sitting area with a table and chairs. A row of windows over the counters and sink looking out to the yard. I cooked nearly every dinner here in the 2.5 weeks we spent here.

There were only a couple of small empty shelves in the kitchen cupboards for me to put my food away (sometimes vacation rental places do not leave you enough space for your things - food in the kitchen, books and maps in the livingroom - this house was like that). The pots and pans are old and need to be replaced; so do the dishes (mismatching coffee cups, older plate set with not enough bowls and small plates). Some of the cupboards were a bit disorganized with kitchen things shoved randomly into them.

Problems or Bonuses

Problems: The bed sheets and towels were heavily scented with fabric softener. The housekeeper called us when we arrived and I mentioned this and she arranged to come the next day to replace the sheets. She told me we could request this from Rural Retreats when booking. She replaced the sheets, but the comforter was still very fragrant and the bathroom towels were so heavily scented that my eyes stung when I used them. Luckily I had our own facecloths with us and we just made do with the towels.

If you are sensitive to the chemicals in fragrances, request fragrance-free bedding and towels when booking, but be aware that the comforters and blankets hold on to those fragrances. I was told that people use fabric softeners here because of the hard water, but this is the first trip where we have run into two places in a row with heavily scented bedding.

We had a mid-stay cleaning, but the housekeeper did not give us any more dishwasher soap or garbage bags (a weeks worth was supplied). Usually with Rural Retreats cottages all these basics are supplied. When we arrived the recycling bin was overflowing with wine bottles (from previous tenants?) and we had to put it out on the garbage day.

The French doors from the kitchen would not open. I called the housekeeper after we arrived and she told me the owner was coming next month to fix them, but if we wanted she could ask Rural Retreats if they could be fixed now. This seems a bit tacky to me – to make me insist that I wanted them fixed. Rural Retreats gave her the okay and they were fixed later that day. We were staying for 2.5 weeks - wouldn't she assume we would want to be able to open those doors to get to the outside sitting area and back yard?

They unlocked the phone for us so we could use it with our computers, so we are paying for phone calls made, but they left the coinbox phone attached which meant to make a call we had to stuff coins into the phone and we were paying for the call also (on the bill we received after our stay). I asked for a regular phone to use, but the housekeeper did not have one, so we had to go out and buy one.

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 $159/night for our 17 night stay.

Do you recommend this vacation rental to others?

On the whole, the cottage was well furnished and comfortable. It is a beautiful cottage in a beautiful village. We were limited in our choice of cottages because we wanted a place where we could spend two weeks (were booking at the last minute) and that had a phone we could use with the computer. I probably would not stay here again, but for this trip we wanted to explore this part of the Cotswolds and this was a good base.

But I was disappointed in a few things mentioned above. When you book through Rural Retreats, you pay more, but you usually get a perfect cottage. I think arriving to find the French doors not working and having to ask to have them fixed put me off about the cottage from the beginning.

See my photos of this vacation rental: Slow Travel Photos

Things to do in this area

There is good walking nearby, but only one main trail from Windrush. You can hike in the next village, Sherbourne, at a big park area. Or on a good trail from Burford. From Windrush you can hike up through fields near the river in the direction of Great Rissington and Bourton or on a footpath to the nearby village of Little Barrington (and the pub). We liked the area south of Burford near Eastleach for hiking.

Review

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

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