Wonderful cottage rental, especially for families
Review Submitted: July 14, 2009
Date of Stay: July 2009
I stayed at this property with my husband, our two young daughters (ages 6 and 3) and our au pair. The set up was absolutely perfect. The cottage is lovely & cozy, and the views are really stupendous. I loved that the house has tons of small lamps, so the lighting in the evening was particularly inviting. My girls played endlessly in the garden & we had most meals on the terrace. The kitchen is quite nice & was stocked with everything we needed. The bathrooms are very nicely renovated & the master bath shower is spectacular - with a skylight.
The pictures on the booking site don't do this place justice, and the location is amazing. The village of Troutbeck is one of the most beautiful rural villages with great walks (the one starting at the post office & going up the hill is very manageable for kids & has stunning views), and yet this house is a short drive to Ambleside, which is quite charming & has great shops, and it is also near Windermere which is useful for the train station. Also, the house is completely quiet - if you have any concerns about it being on a road: don't. We are particularly sensitive to that & the road is an extremely quiet back road & the stone walls make any cars practically unnoticeable -- plus the way the house is situated makes it all very, very private. Windermere also has a couple of nice restaurants (Giotti for Italian & Prince of India for Indian), but I recommend avoiding the real touristy part of Windermire. Ambleside has the "Lucy's" shop & restaurants, which are great. We drove in to Lucy's (gourmet) grocery every day to get warm, fresh-baked scones & provisions for picnics, etc. Best grown-up restaurant we went to was The Jumble, in Grasmere. Very relaxed & cozy & is slightly funky rather than formal (the bathroom walls are papered with old album covers from very hip bands of the 70s and 80s), The Jumble had fantastic food & they were very friendly. Also, apparently there are some excellent fancy restaurants literally down the road from the house.
We took the most amazing drive over the Wrynose Pass to go to Muncaster Castle near Ravenglass (which was great for our kids particularly because of the World Owl Center there). The drive is a bit precarious...lots of winding roads on the edge of cliffs but it was gorgeous & entirely worth the slight fear it engenders. That drive is particularly useful if, like us, your capacity for hiking is limited because of small children.
Owner's Response: We're so pleased that we have had so many fantastic reviews from our first full season. Many reviewers have commented that the photos on this site don't do the cottage justice. The trouble is that we have so many bookings that it's difficult to timetable a photographer in!
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Helpful votes: 3/3
marks the location of the property in England
