Product Reviews : Travel - Short Haul : Domaine De Beaumont, Agde, France

There was much praise for the "excellent on site childcare" provided by qualified English nannies who also babysit : "our two year old loved the kids' club which meant we could relax". Five minutes drive from the nearest town and "really good restaurants", it's "only a ten minute drive to great beaches". Someone commented: "we would have liked more local information from the tour operator" and "it was a bit of a shock to find the pools are unheated, you either have to be very hardy or go in the summer!" plus "it's not cheap". But one reviewer summed up: "it worked for us and we'll definitely go back".

We spent our Summer holiday at Domaine de Beaumont, near Agde, booking two weeks for a villa for four in August 2007.

Our two girls, aged nine and six respectively enjoyed meeting other children on the site and roaming without danger around the grounds but we were very disappointed in the standard of accommodation provided for the price we paid.

The Domaine isn’t cheap but the fittings and fixtures in our villa certainly were!

We weren’t told that the toilet and bathroom would be downstairs next to the lounge and kitchen and the stairs were a painted wooden ladder affair with no hand rail. My youngest daughter slipped down them twice and I was constantly concerned during the night that the girls would fall on their way down to use the toilet.

There was no window or fan in the toilet (not pleasant) and in the bathroom the sink was chipped and there was no support supplied for the shower, so it had to be hand held. Most evenings we ran out of hot water – not good after a day spent by the pool and outrageous for the amount of money we were paying.

The cutlery and kitchen equipment was spartan and cheap, forks and knives bent when we used them. A metal spoke outside the patio doors was dangerous, we had place a shoe over it to stop people stubbing their bare feet and tripping over.

There were no views of the vineyards from our small garden area, these were obscured by a large hedge which was most disappointing as we had imagined sipping a glass of wine and looking out over the vines.

As for the bedrooms, there was no hanging wardrobe in either of the two rooms – just a metal rail in our bedroom and wooden pegs in the girls’ room. Our divan bed was diabolica, it was small and very uncomfortable. The bed linen was a motley assortment of sheets and covers which must have been at least a decade old, ditto with the towels supplied.

To add insult to injury there was no cleaning service supplied after one week, unless you paid extra for it and although we were supplied with the motley clean sheets and towels after one week we were expected to strip and remake our own beds. Likewise on departure we were asked to clean the villa and strip the beds before leaving.

The on-site restaurant although pleasant was not good for children’s meals serving either eggs/ham or burger and chips every night without any variety for the entire two weeks.

And if you fancied an early morning dip in the pool, forget it – the pool didn’t open until 10am, so you wouldn’t be able to gain entrance.

There were actually two pools but the more attractive upper pool featured on the website and in brochures was so cold that only the hardiest visitor took the plunge.

We didn’t expect luxury but for the price we expected something much better than this and our fellow visitors staying on the Domaine were in agreement.

Will we be returning and would we recommend this property to others ?

What do you think?