Mr Harley, September 2020
August 2020
The cottage is lovely and well-kept, clean, comfortable and well equipped, with plenty of space for 5 adults and a medium sized dog.. Penny and Nigel are lovely, and available if needed. We found the WiFi was very intermittent and phone signal very poor, especially inside the house due to the really thick stone walls, which did have the bonus of keeping the house cool. We spent the evenings watching bats from the house. There are lots of walking trails, but they are hard-going and probably not suitable for people with mobility issues or small children. Access to the cottage is via a long single-track, steep and windy road, with quite a few blind spots and few passing places. This is walkable but going down is far easier than coming back up as it is very steep! There is another walking track which straighter but steeper and would be more difficult after wet weather. It took us at least 10 minutes to walk down both tracks, and the local shop would probably take a further 10 minutes (or more) to walk to, but there are shops within a 10 minute drive, and the pubs would probably be about half hour walk from the cottage. We managed to pre-book an Asda grocery delivery for groceries but the driver did have difficulties finding the property as the postcode covers a very large area! Remember to take essentials like milk with you until you can get to a shop. The Gordon Riggs garden centre is a nice visit but only allows dogs in if they are put in a trolley - not suitable for our dog!! And the Waterfall tearooms and giftshop doesn't allow dogs at all, and currently doesn't sell gifts! We had a marvelous meal at the Shepherds Rest in Lumbutts, which was a short drive away, and allowed dogs in the covered outside area. The food was incredible and made better by the government's Eat out to Help out scheme. Drives to Blackpool, Liverpool and Leeds were just over 1 hour away from the cottage. Overall we had a lovely, peaceful stay in beautiful countryside surroundings.