We were sold a break which would be “away from it all” & “romantic”, probably sharing the property only with Benedicte & her husband.
Instead we arrived to find a permanent sitting tenant. B’s daughter, her husband, their 2 toddlers. A son & someone else. At other times, other house guests too.
It emerged that the family would be with us for almost all the 3 weeks we stayed. Seldom did they leave the premises.
The family is charming. But as a result of the crowding, we seldom got any peace. From children running around above our heads, or playing just outside our sitting room window with an adult, or coming into our room, or making us feel discouraged from using the pool, or running around the little garden outside our bedroom.
Instead of relaxing, we would wonder when the next distraction would happen. The “private garden” is in fact not so. It was used frequently as a path to the tool shed & wine store.
The lovely children, & charming but smelly swimming dog, can’t be blamed for their curiosity, & it’s human nature for adults to peep in through the net curtains to check if we’re in, as they pass. But again, this means there is no privacy, even to change out of your clothes in the bedroom area.
There were other interruptions. The water failed 3 times. The third time for most of the day - despite being promised that they would stop supplying us with water from the well, which was drying up. The sand in the well water stopped the toilet from working & washing machine. We were amazed that B wanted to save money on using mains water, when we had paid her so much to stay with her for 3 weeks - a real stretch for us, meant to be a big treat.
Another interruption was the electrical work. We were left to clean up the masonry dust after it.
Why not leave? In a word: hope. And knowing that it would have been almost impossible & expensive to find an alternative at peak season. If we’d wanted to stay in a busy hotel, we would have. We paid over 5 months before - if at any time we’d been told “my family's coming” we would have happily cancelled our booking.
The main criticism we have is that B misled us, in 3 conversations, into believing that she was sorry, and would compensate us a little. We’re journalists of 45 years experience, and we don’t make up things like that. B seemed genuinely sympathetic about our unhappy experience. We realise that this was just an act.
B said she was sad, but wasn’t, please take anything she might now say with caution.