Dog Friendly Porthmadog Holiday Cottages

Reviews

What our customers say about their holidays

• Trevor - Verified booking

  The instructions given by Sykes to gain entry to the apartment are confusing.

  The address given for The Old Cornhill is No 6 (which is actually the number for the whole building. However, the Old Cornhill door has a Number 2 on it. But there are also two doors with Number 2 on them - OC and Cornhill Courtyard, which are sometimes let together as a single unit. You need to use the door at the back of the building, along the dank, rubbish strewn short alley way. There is however. a much easier way of locating the correct door. You are told to enter the courtyard and the OC entrance is round the back. Once in the courtyard, there are very clear nameplates next to each door, that identify The Old Cornhill and Cornhill Courtyard - that's what the location instructions should say. There are two key boxes – use the one on the left of the front door. And the 5 digit code you are given is incorrect as the key box has only 4 digits. You need to omit the 0 at the end of the number you are given. It seems to us that the apartment was renovated for holiday lets about 15 years ago and has been left to fall into decline ever since. The two sofas are saggy, shabby and uncomfortable and the cushion covers are stained. The mattress falls away at its edges as the edge springs have failed. There is a lot of black mould on the grout in the shower. The bathroom sink plug hole does not fit and your bowl of water will seep away whilst you are using it. The kitchen sink tap drips when on full cold. The front door is not very secure and better locks would be advisable. The windows are draughty and the wind whistles through them. The electrical items display stickers that state the last electrical test was in November 2022. There is an iron with a ‘failed – do not use’ sticker on it. There is an airer that has a broken catch so you have to lean it up against something otherwise it falls over. The oven door doesn’t close properly. The detergent drawer of the washing machine was full of black mould. The freezer is heavily frosted up and, as a result, we could only open one of the three drawers. The cooker hood filters smell strongly of grease. The kitchen is fairly well equipped but there are only 2 teaspoons and 2 mugs and a pair of tongs would be useful. One of the wine glasses was cracked. Many of the glasses have dishwasher burn. We could hear every footstep made by the users of the apartment above us and, from our bathroom, we could hear nearly every word said by the users of the apartment alongside. The listing says there is a patio or outdoor seating area. This takes the form of a few pieces of broken and dirty garden furniture against the wall in the courtyard where residents park and the bins are stored. The bins were overflowing and there was rubbish on the ground in the courtyard. One bin, in particular, was overflowing when we arrived and was only emptied a fortnight later just as we were leaving. The gateway to the courtyard is very narrow and the courtyard has room for 2 cars if they are parked well. The spaces outside the building, on the road, were always taken and so we parked in one of the 20 or so free-to-park spaces outside the Tafarn Pencei pub 50 yards along the road. We managed to get a space there every time we needed one. The listing states the apartment has a TV. Being 15 years old, it is not a smart TV and only offers the freeview channels, rather than what current day expectations of a TV would be. The remote control for the TV does not work (we changed the batteries and it still did not work) so you have to use the channel and sound buttons on the back of the TV to turn on, change channel and sound. The USB port on the side of the TV does not work. There is a blu-ray player but it and the TV do not ‘talk to one another’ and so the blu-ray player is useless. We reported this to Sykes Cottages AKA Menai Holidays by phone on our second day (when they called us to reset the router as the lady downstairs had a problem with wi-fi) and did not receive a response for 5 days. They sent round a ‘technician’ in our absence to fix another problem with downstairs' access, as well as ours, but our problems were not even looked at, let alone fixed. The downstairs issue was "fixed" by the expedient of taping a card to one of the plug switches saying "do not turn off" - which card could only be read if it was lifted up - it was not placed so you could easily read the instruction. We reported this to Sykes/Menai via the portal as it was a weekend and the phone lines were closed, but never heard from them again. It seems they were only interested in appeasing the complaints from the tenant in Cornhill Courtyard, rather than the problems we were experiencing. They even closed our call before we got back from our day out and could receive my feedback as to whether the issue had been resolved or not. As it was a Saturday, phoning hte office resulted in a "we are closed" message, hence notifying them via the official channel of the Portal.

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• Susan - Verified booking

  Thank you for letting me stay at short notice.

  This is a return visit. Fabulous place, great layout on ground floor so on the flat for shops etc. Kitchen is incredibly well equipped and a small welcome pack of Welsh cakes and milk left for which incredibly grateful. Some sachets of tea and coffee provided and lots of useful cleaning stuff and dish washer tablets. Wanted for nothing. Quick shop in local Tesco and I was good to go. Hob, cooker, dishwasher all simple to use. Wonderful location and fabulous walks with eating out suggestions provided in generous welcome folder (on book shelf). Very comfy beds and fairly clean (under sofa cushions were a bit grim and skirtings need a scrub/lick of paint but I hoovered round: no issue for me. A note for housekeeping; sorry I forgot to leave before I checked out. A bulb is gone in the bathroom, light switch in hall is broken and heating was not on on arrival so incredibly cold (and I’m hot blooded!). It took 6 hours to warm living room area up (February to be fair!). Thankfully, I knew where boiler was from a previous stay. The shower was fab but, I couldn’t work out how to get it hotter than lukewarm! I moved boiler to hottest water setting (temporary and only to get shower hot) but it remained resolutely cool. Didn’t spoil my holiday, prob a simple fix that I can’t work out, however, it woke me up in a morning! Bath panel needs replacing as mentioned in visitor book and it stands out in what is a beautifully furnished home. I’m sure you’ll be doing that in low season as you have stated in the book as part of your continual maintenance programme. Thoroughly recommend and hope to return. Very grateful for a week’s rest on my own to recuperate the soul x

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• Amy - Verified booking

  Great location, in the middle of town, but a private group of houses.

  No noise heard from the town or anything. Lovely and spacious accommodation with a very well equipped kitchen with modern appliances. Beds nice and soft, loads more room in the double than it looks in the picture, long and thin, rather than short. Good room in the twin, I had space to put the travelcot up between the two beds without needing to move the beds around. Sofas are a little slippy as they are leather and personal preference is not for leather, but can understand why they are more practical in a holiday let. Owner rang us on the way to let us know there may be a small issue with the highchair once we got there, but to let them know and they would be coming to change it over in the week. It was fine, just a little stained which is to be expected with a baby's highchair! It has also been changed over for a brand new one now anyway. I text the owner letting them know of a couple of things that could do with being fixed (nothing that affected the holiday, things such as one of the spotlights in the bathroom was out, it was 1 of 6 so didn't affect our stay at all) and these were sorted ASAP. Parking is available for two cars, but could potentially get a little tight depending on the size of your vehicles. Although pet friendly, there was not a hair in sight. Generally feels a well maintained flat. Will definitely be booking again.

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• Stephen - Verified booking

  A very nice and well appointed property with stunning views of the harbour.

  We found it to be very clean and well equipped. No complaints about anything apart from just 2 items. 1) the "low level" bed is VERY low, and difficult for oldies to get out of. 2) the brown sofa/bed has had its day and needs replacing. It is old and stained. It looks like it converts to a bed, but the problem is that it starts to do this while you are sitting on it, so the base tilts and the extension starts to come out, making it so uncomfortable that you have to get off it. We had to move it away from the wall because we were worried we might trip over the bit sticking out on our way past it during the night. I have photos if you wish to see evidence. Other than that everything else was fine. The kitchen is well equipped, the bathroom is modern and well appointed, the shower was really good. We would definitely stay there again, although we would prefer a slightly higher bed if possible.

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• Caroline - Verified booking

  We had a really nice week in Porthmadog.

  The location of this apartment is excellent, and we'd definitely return to Porthmadog itself for a future holiday. On the whole the apartment was as advertised, spacious, and well-equipped (minus essentials in the kitchen like salt etc), however we did question why we needed to bring our own towels since we were asked to put bed linen in a degradable bag at the end of the stay anyway (with a "threat" of a £25 charge if we didn't do this). Covid seems like a bit of an excuse here, and it's not ideal to have damp towels to deal with at the end of the week. The parking on site was really handy, and we had no issues, but wondered whether it was actually possible to manoeuvre into/out of the designated space should their have been cars in the adjacent spaces. Overall a nice place to stay for a week.

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