Mr EllisMrs SwannMr Barnes-Gott - verified booking

"Needed instuctions about how to find Elfin Cottage - after a long journey, we had quite a job to locate it. Felt the whole house was 'tired' - it could do with redecorating, and the bathrooms brought up to date. Kitchen adequate, but also looked old. Too much stuff, needed to be rationalised. The furnishings lacked something - one of the sofas smelt - dogs? In fact we thought the whole place needed a thorough, in depth, clean (this is not to criticise the people who went in to spruce up between clients - sure they did a good job, with the time available to them). Books very old; everything felt greasy, even the blue information folder. Contact telephone number in the folder rang off immediately. The garden was charming but way past its best - dead plants and overgrown shrubs. And why not a table and chairs in the garden? The chairs provided, once we'd cleaned them, were only comfortable to lie back in - hard to drink a cup of tea unless you perched on the edge. Finally, we think that you should provide some means of collecting recyclables, and instructions as to what to do with them. Surely just chucking everything in one bin isn't enough these days.Very restful and all necessities catered for. Garden was lovely and had some welcome shade under the apple tree. Thoroughly enjoyed the holiday and would love to visit again. Only little negative points was that parking could be difficult (although appreciate there are little narrow streets) and the dustbin was filled and overflowing with unhealthy unbagged rubbish from previous renters. Loved it thoughShowers were good too. Unfortunately it was also rather tired and jaded. The exterior was rather scruffy and there were copious amounts of dog poo on the garden and in a bag left by the front door - not a pretty sight when you arrive at your holiday cottage. The free wifi annoyingly gave up after a few days - possibly a router problem. Whilst we would wholeheartedly recommend Portleven (lovely harbour and foodie lovers paradise), we won't be going back to Elfin Cottage."

Mr Port - verified booking

"Firstly, and most importantly, the cottage was very damp. We appreciate that we were near the sea, however, it was unpleasant to live in, as for example, the sofas in the lounge were permanently damp to sit on. This meant that we could not enjoy the cottage as we planned and would expect, given that we paid a lot of money (£670 for a week). There was a dehumidifier supplied but this was not up to the job, and very noisy. A bigger dehumidifier needed to be supplied and permanently on, to dry out the property. As it was, we used the dehumidifier supplied and it was on permanently-we collected numerous full buckets of water from it every four hours! (Which was when we had to empty it, as it was quite small). Because the property was damp (including the beds), this meant we had to go out more than otherwise planned. We were fortunate that the weather for the week was on the whole, pretty good. If it had been a lot wetter and colder, I am not sure what we would have done (gone home early I suspect!). The wood burner was unable to be used, as the door handle did not shut properly. This was reported to Sykes during our stay, but not rectified. A usable wood burner would have been nice and certainly helped to dry out the property! Other things to note: there are no instructions supplied about the electric storage heaters, nor the oven. These would have been very helpful. Finally, there were suppposed to be two sets of keys supplied (according to the guest handbook in the cottage) but only one set was supplied. This was reported but unable to be rectified by the owner and Sykes. Overall, I feel what was provided, especially given what we paid and could reasonably expect, was very much lacking."

Mr EllisMr Barnes-Gott - verified booking

"Needed instuctions about how to find Elfin Cottage - after a long journey, we had quite a job to locate it. Felt the whole house was 'tired' - it could do with redecorating, and the bathrooms brought up to date. Kitchen adequate, but also looked old. Too much stuff, needed to be rationalised. The furnishings lacked something - one of the sofas smelt - dogs? In fact we thought the whole place needed a thorough, in depth, clean (this is not to criticise the people who went in to spruce up between clients - sure they did a good job, with the time available to them). Books very old; everything felt greasy, even the blue information folder. Contact telephone number in the folder rang off immediately. The garden was charming but way past its best - dead plants and overgrown shrubs. And why not a table and chairs in the garden? The chairs provided, once we'd cleaned them, were only comfortable to lie back in - hard to drink a cup of tea unless you perched on the edge. Finally, we think that you should provide some means of collecting recyclables, and instructions as to what to do with them. Surely just chucking everything in one bin isn't enough these days.Showers were good too. Unfortunately it was also rather tired and jaded. The exterior was rather scruffy and there were copious amounts of dog poo on the garden and in a bag left by the front door - not a pretty sight when you arrive at your holiday cottage. The free wifi annoyingly gave up after a few days - possibly a router problem. Whilst we would wholeheartedly recommend Portleven (lovely harbour and foodie lovers paradise), we won't be going back to Elfin Cottage."

Mr Ellis - verified booking

"Needed instuctions about how to find Elfin Cottage - after a long journey, we had quite a job to locate it. Felt the whole house was 'tired' - it could do with redecorating, and the bathrooms brought up to date. Kitchen adequate, but also looked old. Too much stuff, needed to be rationalised. The furnishings lacked something - one of the sofas smelt - dogs? In fact we thought the whole place needed a thorough, in depth, clean (this is not to criticise the people who went in to spruce up between clients - sure they did a good job, with the time available to them). Books very old; everything felt greasy, even the blue information folder. Contact telephone number in the folder rang off immediately. The garden was charming but way past its best - dead plants and overgrown shrubs. And why not a table and chairs in the garden? The chairs provided, once we'd cleaned them, were only comfortable to lie back in - hard to drink a cup of tea unless you perched on the edge. Finally, we think that you should provide some means of collecting recyclables, and instructions as to what to do with them. Surely just chucking everything in one bin isn't enough these days."

Mrs SwannMr Barnes-Gott - verified booking

"Very restful and all necessities catered for. Garden was lovely and had some welcome shade under the apple tree. Thoroughly enjoyed the holiday and would love to visit again. Only little negative points was that parking could be difficult (although appreciate there are little narrow streets) and the dustbin was filled and overflowing with unhealthy unbagged rubbish from previous renters. Loved it thoughShowers were good too. Unfortunately it was also rather tired and jaded. The exterior was rather scruffy and there were copious amounts of dog poo on the garden and in a bag left by the front door - not a pretty sight when you arrive at your holiday cottage. The free wifi annoyingly gave up after a few days - possibly a router problem. Whilst we would wholeheartedly recommend Portleven (lovely harbour and foodie lovers paradise), we won't be going back to Elfin Cottage."