The good - the house was very comfortable, the beds were very nice, and it was a lovely stay for a big group of friends. The owners gave us a free freshly smoked fish which was very hospitable of them.
However, some other behaviour of the landlords was quite offputting.
Communication via email with the landlords before we arrived was perfectly fine. However when we arrived we discovered that the landlords would be staying on the property while we were there - in an outbuilding only a few metres from the front of the house/living room/one of the bedrooms. This wasn’t communicated to us before we arrived – I thought we would have private use of the property without worrying about disturbing neighbours. They also weren’t very keen to give us the keys to the outside bedroom. On the Saturday night when we were all playing games in the living room (with the curtains open) I noticed the silhouette of someone in the landlords’ building pulling back the curtain and watching us (not just a glance but watching for a while)… felt a bit creepy! We closed the curtains. The next morning one of the owners came over to us while we were relaxing outside before we packed up to leave to accuse us of having too many people staying. We did not have too many people – in fact we paid for 16 people but only had 15 people staying as one was sick. Four of our friends who were staying down the road joined us for dinner and came back for breakfast – and I had asked for and been granted permission for this before we paid for the property. Definitely left a sour taste, it felt like we were in some acrimonious tenant/landlord situation.
One of us did spill some wine on the carpet which we cleaned up as best we could, which I will admit would be annoying to the landlords. They charged us a reasonable fee for carpet cleaning out of our bond so no complaints there (and my apologies for the spillage).
It was a nice stay but slightly dampened by the accusatory behaviour from the owners, and not communicating that they would also be staying on the property.