30 years ago I made a decision to leave the city and come and live in a rural area of Wales, near the coast, for a calmer, quieter life. The houses in this little enclave are nothing special but they're all detached and in decent-sized gardens and most of the neighbours were looking for a similar quiet, low-key existence. Quite a few of the houses are second homes but that didn't seem to cause much of an issue. Fast forward 25 years and now about half the properties here are being offered on Air B'n'B and the whole atmosphere of the place has changed. The two houses closest to me are both second homes and are both let out almost permanently on Air B'n'B. From Easter to the end of September they are chock-a-block, often with large groups. Both houses have a minimum 2-night stay, so there can be three or more changes of tenants each week.
Weekends, in particular, are a nightmare. Large groups of probably perfectly pleasant people arrive from town and then want to sit out in the gardens until 2 or 3am in the morning, drinking and barbecuing and whooping at the sheer wonder of being able to see the stars. I do understand how lovely it must seem if you spend most of your life in town and how tempting to want to sit out and play music and keep the fire pit going all night — but what about me, next door, having to sleep with the windows shut because of the smoke and noise?
I've asked the two neighbours who own the properties closest to me to change the wording on their Air B'n'B listing to tell people that there's to be no noise after, say, 10pm (I've stayed in a number of Air B'n'Bs where this has been a stipulation) and they have both adjusted the wording to ask people to 'respect the neighbours' — which of course they don't do once they've had a few glasses of wine. One of the neighbours has responded to my complaint about noise by installing a piano outdoors on the covered terrace in their garden, so at 7.15am this morning I was woken by a child 'playing' the piano 30 feet from my bedroom window. It might not be such a big issue in town but here, where it's quiet and there's nothing but birdsong, it's really intrusive.
I've complained to Air B'n'B and the council, but the council is stretched beyond capacity and when I've tried to get Environmental Health officers to come out at 2am and monitor the noise themselves I've been told that there's no one available. Am I being so unreasonable to want the Air B'n'B guests to be quiet after 10pm?