TheEagleGuy
August 2021
The property is located right next to the main road through Piddlehinton, a small village about 6 miles north of Dorchester. The property location made it a good base for our plans to explore southern Dorset. Piddlehinton is fairly small and apart from a church and a gastro-pub there isn't really much there. The pub, Thimble Inn, is located a very short walk from the property. We didn't visit as we were unable to get a table booked even for mid-week nights despite calling several days in advance. Booking well in advance of your visit seems to be the only way, at least during busy summer months. Luckily there are plenty of shops, good restaurants, and takeaways only a 10 minute drive away in Dorchester.
The building is an old building that has been restored and converted to a holiday cottage. The ground floor is made up of a small toilet and a single room that is split into a kitchen, seating, dining and entrance area. The first floor is accessed via a sturdy stair that is located between the entrance area and the dining area. The first floor is made up of a master bedroom to the right as you come up the stairs, a bathroom straight ahead and a single bedroom to the left. In addition to the main building there is also a small writer's hut next to the main building. This looked to be a nice place to chill out if anyone need a few minutes of peace and quiet.
In general the restoration work has been done quite well. However, I have to admit that I didn't really appreciate some of the more unusual features such as the panelling for the half height wall separating the kitchen from the rest of the downstairs areas which has been salvaged from a railway carriage and the fire damaged planks used for some of the stair steps. And the rather ugly small bookshelf at the end of the kitchen wall simply looked like driftwood salvaged from a beach somewhere. And perhaps that is also where they found the equally ugly and inconvenient metal box that is used as a coffee table.
Note that the above points are cosmetic or just my own personal opinion and that they may work well for others.
My bottom is still hurting two days later from the pain of sitting on the very uncomfortable wooden dining chairs. Even using a cushion didn't really help much. And while I am at it I may as well say that I found the old fashioned square bottom sinks in the toilet and the bathroom very inconvenient to use, that I didn't think the kitchen area had been done well at all, that the synthetic pillows and quilts weren't very nice and that the lighting could be quite a lot better in most area. In addition the tiled floor have cracked in several places and the underfloor heating only seemed to work in the entrance area. The rest of the floor was rather cold to walk on, particularly in the morning.
So quite a few negative points really. But despite all of these we still actually enjoyed our stay and as a whole the property actually worked quite well for us.
I particularly think the location is pretty good if you are looking for a base from which to do daytrips to various places in Dorset. The parking area is off-road and fairly easy to drive in and out from. The master bedroom is very large and the bed is a good size with a fairly comfortable mattress. The upstairs is in general much better finished than the downstairs which frankly looks a little bit ramshackle and haphazardly put together in comparison. Our 11 year old son also liked the single bedroom.
There's wifi which was ok when it was working. Unfortunately it quite often didn't. This may be because the connection appears to be via a wireless access point that is piggy-backing on a broadband connection in a nearby building rather than via it's own wired connection.
The TV in the seating area is quite small but adequate. Only the free-to-air digital channels are available and there's no premium TV channels. So if you are planning to watch Sky or BT channels you have to hope that the wifi connection will up to streaming these to your own device. Normally I wouldn't use the TV much while on holiday but with the Olympics on I found myself switching the TV on more often than I would normally expect. The reception was unfortunately variable with both glitches in the video and the sound fading in and out at times. But neither was so bad that I couldn't follow what was happening.
The road past the property is not too busy, but the building soundproofing isn't great and the noise from passing cars is very noticeable in all rooms in the building. This didn't bother us too much as we were out and about during the day and the road gets pretty quiet at night and didn't cause us any trouble with sleep.
There's no garden to speak of but there is an open area just in front of the entrance that is large enough for off-road parking for at least two cars.
The property is also situated such that the outside area is often in the shade. So while there is a small portable table and a couple of chairs that can be put up outside the proximity to the road and the lack of a garden doesn't really make this an attractive option.
In summary I think anyone that is looking for a rustic property will absolutely love Way's Forge, while those looking for something a bit more modern may find it best to avoid it. Similarly you may also want to avoid it if you are sensitive to road noise or if sitting outside in garden sipping a glass of wine on a summer evening is your thing. But I will absolutely recommend this for anyone that is looking for a convenient place from which to explore Dorset and that wouldn't be too concerned about the negative points mentioned in this review.