“There were many plusses to this cottage, the photos show these and they are accurate.”
I will however concentrate on points that may be of interest to people making future bookings so that they may be taken into consideration. apart from the parking, everything else below could be corrected by the owners.
The internet speed is terrible, lots of dropout everyday. I tested it regularly and on a good day for a short period it would be 11 megabytes per second, with and upload of 0.2. It's BT Internet.
I thought that this was a consequence of being in a rural area, until we had various meals in the four pubs in the village which are 250 metres away and what took 45 minutes to one hour to download in the cottage, such as a guided walk and map for the area, took 1.5 seconds in the pubs. The cottage has a very old BT router. I strongly suggest that this is replaced with a smarthub and suscribe to a better connection speed. I would happily pay the extra £5 per week on top of the current price.
It has a very large, lovely smart TV. That's where it ends. There are very few channels on terrestrial TV, with great gaps between say channel 5 and then the next is channel 31 and the next 57. It's because there is no Freeview on the TV.
They state that Netflix, iPlayer, ITV Hub, Amazon Prime Video are available. That is true. However you can't access them for more than 4-5 seconds at a time as the buffering is absolutely terrible and was so everyday. Often none of these were available as they would not open. We tried watching a film or a programme so many times, but instead watched only a tiny clip, followed by minutes of the buffering sign and then a notice 'Whoops sorry something has happened, please try later'. The cause is the apalling download speed / broadband width and the constant dropout.
The bathroom in the main bedroom is modern and very impressive, until you use the shower. It is an open shower and despite experimenting with the shower, taking the flow down to the lowest possible setting, the outflow in the floor could not cope. Water soon made its way across the floor. We stopped using it and used the tiny, but effective shower in the second bathroom.
The kitchen is nice, except for the electric Aga which takes a long time to heat up, then you cannot control the heat. Makes cooking difficult, especially as there is only one ring for cooking and one ring to keep food warm. It looks nice and cottage-like, but is a real nuisance and a disappointment.
Please replace this with a modern cooker, with 3/4 cooking rings, an oven that you can control and even set timings. With the big black oven door, once closed you cannot see anything.
We really appreciate feedback and do our best to improve based on it.
We do wish you had raised the broadband issues with us whilst you were staying. We had it checked out immediately and there was a fault with BT. We do pay for BT superfast broadband and ordinarily we get a download speed of around 60 mps and upload of about 15 mps.
The cottage was redeveloped as our home and is done with things we love and in our style. We love the Aga and miss it when we are away..... it can be an acquired taste, but once you have got used to it, you never want to cook on anything else.
The upstairs shower we have used ourselves many times without any problems. It is a Drummonds teardrop shower, and the room has been designed to drain through a channel. I have asked the builder to check the drain.
I understand our home might not be to everybody's taste. We think it is a little piece of luxurious wonder in a magical setting. I do know, however, that a wet week on Dartmoor can be tough.
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