Road noise at holiday cottage:(

[JamSconeCat]

Would love an outside opinion. perhaps I just got unlucky with my booking!
So I’m in a gorgeous little cottage, lovely place, people, etc. arrived yesterday evening. I’m generally a late sleeper and tend to work late so don’t rise with the dawn.
Came for peace and quiet, cottage described s such by company and reviews. Not terribly touristy, but does get visitors.

But around 7 this morning the road out front kicked in.
It’s a slight yet long incline, and vehicles have to slow down at a tiny bridge then speed up again. Some cars are fairly silent but most sound like the groaning beast from hell. From what I see nobody is speeding or doing anything wrong, just constant whining noise and excessive slamming as people park up or go.

Using loud white noise app but no joy, the Revving and impact just blast through it. Tried headphones, no joy. Unless I am going mad, it’s like vehicles are a lot louder merely cruising than they used to be, it’s a fairly wall shuddering din.

What I can’t get my head around is I am in the attic bedroom, no windows on the road side! Just one velux facing fields at back. The noise isn’t entering via the window at all, it is literally shuddering through the front wall across the entire house.

Is it U to imagine I won’t get much peace here? Am here for 3 weeks as am doing work in the area but a lot of the time I will be indoors wfh too, so really paid a premium for the peace :(
Is there a way to ‘manage to ignore it?’ When the noise is so aggressive sounding? I’ve had such a bad time at home during covid due to environment noise so am definitely at wits end after paying out for this just to find more disturbance. Was already truly fed up so probably over sensitive too.

Just to add, the car sounds are so intrusive that even with loud white noise app the sound is vibrating the beds and furniture. It’s inescapable.

Can you not ask the Company that you booked through if they have another cottage placed away from the Road in the immediate area.

Is the noise worse up in the bedroom? Our bedrooms at home are all in the eaves and I have to say it does mean the noise from traffic is much louder than the other rooms in the house.

Ooh, I would have presumed rooms with road facing windows would be worse?
There’s sash windows…

Can hear it all over house. What wasn’t obvious prior to booking is several ticket machines for parking along the road, so half the town is parking here. It is pretty much continuous loud slamming and engine noise going up the hill.

I had a vain hope Monday would quieten, but I think this is fucked .

No idea how I would ask for a different house, there were only 2 available in the area this month.

Perhaps it's just a Saturday morning thing? Hopefully it will improve?

But I'm not sure there's much you can do if you're there now. Leave honest feedback after your visit so others will know.

This happened to us years ago in Devon. I now religiously use Google maps and Street view before booking to check out the road (sorry not very helpful).

But hopefully it will improve for you later on.

Thanks, I noticed all reviews, plus those in guest book are very positive, all describe as peaceful

Perhaps company delete bad ones, I don’t know.
Certainly no missing pages from guest book!

Have had a look from bedroom window, most cats are smooth and quiet, even having to slow then speed up at the narrow part of hill.
This means the din is coming from impatient rev-ers with growling engines or crappy gears, etc.
So it’s the type of vehicle, rather than all of them.
The bad ones are just constantly growling and shaking the wall.

Perhaps vehicles haven’t got louder, perhaps some people are simply….driving differently.

Smooth cats, certainly! Cars too!

You sound a bit crazy OP. Have a glass of wine and chill out!

@runforyourdog

You sound a bit crazy OP. Have a glass of wine and chill out!

That would be the most optimistic solution I could simply stop being crazy and problem solved. Perchance U R 1 of them!!11

This would drive me mental tbh. I always look for cottages that are down long lanes in the middle of nowhere for this reason. I'd honestly give it till Monday and look for something else.

This should make me miserable too. I’d be looking for alternative accommodation in your shoes, if that’s an option, even if it had to be with another company.. If ‘peace and quiet’ was part of the advertising then the company should refund you if that’s clearly not accurate.

Not sure I could claim a refund for car noise.

Thanks to the pp who suggested using a lower room with window. Shoved a spare duvet over it and it is definitely less noisy than the attic room! Not ideal by any stretch but not as bad.

Right now someone is repeatedly revving, constantly. Fuck knows why.
There is literally no way of blocking most of that out.

Complain to the company or BNb owner now! Of course reviews are selected! My friends have bnb's and don't publish reviews from any naysayer. Or they simply don't ask them for a review!

Is there some sort of event going on nearby OP? Petrolheads convention maybe … Just wondering if this may be unusual and so will be all over soon. Hope so for your sake.

We went away at Christmas for 4 nights and couldn’t sleep because it was so bad. None of the reviews mentioned it and we ended up sleep deprived!

Was awful.

I think the reviews were deleted.

You need lots and lots of

Could you try earplugs if moving is not an option?

Naever had success with earplugs, fans and white noise ok for sleeping usually.

I doubt I could rustle up the energy to move, not brought vehicle so that would be really stressful and time consuming. Will def see how it goes after weekend.
I’m also not sure how I could request a refund for this issue, so it might be better to try and deal with it.
I honestly wonder how all the many little cottages on this street put up with it. They possibly have triple glazing and back rooms. This house only has a kitchen and bathroom at back.

Sorry, I think you’re being unreasonable. Cars, driving on a road, in the day time, is perfectly normal.

If you don’t make a big deal out of it you will begin to get used to it to the point where you don’t notice (ask the thousands of people that live next to train lines). But if you dwell on it and keep thinking about how annoying it is then you’re going to spoil your whole time there.

Sleep with ear plugs if you need to. I doubt that layering loud white noise over the top is helping, you’re just adding to the noise chaos.

@BaconOmelette

Sorry, I think you’re being unreasonable. Cars, driving on a road, in the day time, is perfectly normal.

If you don’t make a big deal out of it you will begin to get used to it to the point where you don’t notice (ask the thousands of people that live next to train lines). But if you dwell on it and keep thinking about how annoying it is then you’re going to spoil your whole time there.

Sleep with ear plugs if you need to. I doubt that layering loud white noise over the top is helping, you’re just adding to the noise chaos.

I kind of agree with you. I just so wish I was able to sleep through impact noise. My DP could sleep through a road digger beside the bed!

It’s shit, and I wish I’d known it was so noisy, but I would prefer to sort it than complain.
Not sure how easy it would be to learn to live with revving and banging stereos though.
How to define normal noise? It’s not like a main road, it’s a quietish street but seems to get a fuck ton of traffic and short stay parking. Id rather deal with the constant drone of a motorway as these sounds are sudden and really intrusive.

Just go and buy some wax earplugs from
Boots. They’re amazingly effective - far better than foam

@PinchOfVom

Just go and buy some wax earplugs from Boots. They’re amazingly effective - far better than foam

I would say the foam ones or try both 😬

I use ones from Amazon that are for work / factory noise

I think a Saturday morning will be busy though? I think unless you have a rental in the middle of nowhere ,with no roads outside then some noise is inevitable really.Try by all means to see if an exchange is possible .Realistically speaking some noise has to be expected, unless its between 11pm and 7am I think the rules are .

This happened to us in Suffolk. Small village but constant traffic right outside window as no front garden Made the windows vibrate and rattle, terrible early mornings. Spoilt our break

My parents live in a house in a tiny village.
I live in a house on a suburban estate.
The road noise at their house is dreadful. The road isn’t that busy but it’s busy enough to be constant. All the bedrooms are at the front of the house right on the road. The abattoir two villages away employs a lot of people from the nearby town, so when the shifts change everyone drives through the village to the town and vice versa.

We get very little traffic down our road and my parents always comment about how quiet it is here.

There's less other environmental noise so the traffic will likely seem louder to you. I don't think going to the countryside guarantees peace and quiet unless you book somewhere that is in a field which has no animals and won't be ploughed or planted or harvested. I live in a semi rural area and people from the city who come and move here have complained about all the cars. Well yes, that's how we get to the shops and how the food gets there and how the shop worked get there. Small villages have people who live there all the time and need to drive around to live their lives and have even less public transport options. I always Google map where we are staying as well as check for events or markets etc.