We arrived at Rowan Tree Lodge at 2.51pm for a 3pm booking. We informed Penny the day before we were planning on arriving at 3 but received no response to confirm this was ok. I called when we arrived, to be met with a cold response saying ‘we might not be ready yet because you are early’. I offered to wait the 9 minutes until 3 but I was told this was not needed.
The lodge itself is nowhere near as private as we were led to believe. It is directly beside the main building which I think is where the owners live. All day there were cars up & down the driveway, banging doors and conversations in the car park which is situatied directly next to where the hot tub is. There is a fence between the hot tub & the car park, but we never felt totally private. The gardens were being cut for a few hours Tuesday, which was noisy and the gardener was around us while we relaxed in the lodge. Communication with the owners was very poor. I sent 3 messages to Penny during my stay, with no response to any of them. There were no clear instructions on where to leave the keys when we checked out so we had to leave the lodge open with the key on the table.
The hot tub was clean on day one, but because no chemicals are used, by day two the water was already murky. We were left no clear instructions on how to light & keep the hot tub warm, I asked Penny how this worked and had the reply ‘just light it again in the morning to get it hot’. We have no prior knowledge on how to keep a Swedish Bath hot & had to wing it throughout the week, luckily we managed without too much difficulty. I recommend purchasing a second bag of logs as one wasn’t enough to keep the hot tub going all week. We paid extra for the hot tub anyway, maintenance or clear guidelines on the use of the tub, as well as a constant supply of logs should have been included in this price without paying £5 extra for more logs.
The safety of the hot tub is awful. The steps are very slippery with no rubber mat on top for grip. The steps are also not secured to the floor which makes them unstable, as I discovered when they wobbled as I got in Tuesday afternoon & I came crashing to the wooden floor resulting in a number of sizeable bruises on my legs & back.
The lodge felt tired & in need of a good clean. The sitting area in the bedroom had a floor gripper poking through the carpet which I stood on every time I sat to do my makeup.
Overall, we enjoyed having a holiday together, but we wont be back.