bizarre instructions in holiday cottages

[TheNaughtySausage]

I am going on holiday on Friday and I am very excited. Not least because one of my favourite things is looking forward to finding out if the holiday cottage owner is anal/bonkers enough to leave little notes everywhere. I mean, I expect a certain level of "this is how the wood burning stove works" and "bins get emptied on a Wednesday", but some of them are mad... like the one which was laminated and hand-written in 1973 by the looks of the paper, balanced on the back of the ancient fusty sofa, instructing us that ALL the cushions MUST be plumped DAILY.

What odd things have you come across in holiday cottages?

the thing is you come on holiday to relax and often pay through the nose for some tatty place that the owners feel they are doing you such a favour letting it out to you.

you shouldn't have to stress about lots of rituals etc.

after that went to USA and got used to quite nice accommodation with all mod cons.

we once stayed in quite a nice cottage in Aberporth (i think) and it was so old fashioned and there wasn't even a shower. no dishwasher either so hard work. I remember having to clean it and feeling fed up as the dc were quite young

apparently we got a good deal as it was with Prima cottage breaks and it was in a nice location

I also stayed in a holiday cottage with a (laminated!) notice saying "Do NOT put anything wet on the [wooden] draining board." Maybe it was the same one!!

I stayed in a gorgeous Gite in France, and we were most amused by the visitor book posting about how kind the owners were when the guest fell and broke her leg in the house.

Not so amused when I had an accident and had to wake the Gite owners at 1am to summon an ambulance.

I did write in the visitors book how kind the owner was in removing his garden fence to let the stretcher in. That'll teach me to laugh at visitor book entries.

This thread is brilliant. I am only half way through, but laughing so much at the chickens who must not be encouraged, the cups that must not be photographed, the floor that must not be walked on, and the button that musy not be pushed...brilliant! I stayed in a bed and breakfast once where there were little signs about everything, I can't remember any funny ones though. I remember seeing a sign in a hotel instructing guests not to hang clothes on a lamp to dry. Can't say it would have occurred to me to do that anyway.

These are great!
Sadly I don't have any.
At my parents caravan, the only rules are: No smoking anywhere around the caravan, and if you eat any of the food in the freezer, replace it. It's very restful!

In defence of resident owners though.... I've only ever had lovely ones. Much prefer that to the absent owner and agency that doesn't give a shit.

There was the one where the owner asked if everything was all right, we casually mentioned that the shower head was dripping (just in a spirit of keeping her informed) and she appeared a few hours later with a brand-new shower attachment. It was between Christmas and New Year and snowing.

Going slightly off subject, but dh and I once stayed in a lovely gite in France.

It appeared as the week went on, that dh and I were the only ones filling the 'glass bottles' bin, which was situated at the end of the row of gites, and which got emptied every evening by the owners.

Every morning, we had to walk past the other gites to get to the bin, which had been emptied the night before, so there was a massive noise as we dropped the bottles in. Ever tried dropping glass bottles gently into a bin when you're in a very quiet, rural, part of France?

As you can imagine, our empty wine bottles which mingled with the beer bottles, meant that the bin got rather full on a regular basis

We kinda hoped somebody else would drink so it wouldn't just be us, but sadly, this was not to be.

A few comments were made by the owners, I'll say, though they seemed to find it amusing

We don't drink that much, honestly

Great thread, by the way

This thread has to go to classics. It's brilliant. I suppose some notices came about because of a specific thing that happened with previous renters, but some just defy any logical explanation.

We stayed in a Bavarian villa once where the instructions/ welcome note had been carefully translated from the German, literally and word by word, using a dictionary.

It began: "Love Guests!"

I once stayed at a holiday cottage where the owner was selling and had viewings during our stay I was frantically keeping things as clean as possible with no storage and four people staying in a small space.

Not what I had signed up for!

If that had been me, LisaMedicus, you would not have been able to see the floors for mess and I wouldn't have washed up for a week

We're going to move this to Classics!

Oooo Good decision mumsnet.

Quite right too. Brilliant thread

oh howling with laughter here! great thread!

I am incredibly tempted to buy a cottage, rent it out and use all these ideas!
then sit back and wait for the guest book to fill up with great comments!

FrogsGoWhat: about the renters who moved the beds downstairs and the sofas upstairs. Sounds like what someone might do if the upstairs was too haunted to sleep in.

Just remembered this year's villa in Majorca which had NO instructions whatsoever. So no instructions about what to do to use the dishwasher - the water was so hard that it left thick white impossible-to-get-off deposits on every last thing we'd loaded it with. I spent the next 2 days scrubbing the damn stuff and cursing about having to wash by hand when there was a dishwasher you couldn't use sitting next to the sink.

No instructions for play station which the kids were keen to have a go of having been told of its availability on the villa website. We couldn't get it to work and soon discovered it was because there were no batteries in the wireless controllers. We duly bought batteries next time we went to the shops. Dh then spent an hour trying to figure out which channel it was assigned to and setting up the language to English (it had been left in German) only to find there were no bloody games for it anywhere in the place! The kids had been trying to discover some amidst all the crappy DVD/CDs/videos and in amongst all the dusty box games etc but no...... Why the hell didn't they put "bring your own games" on the website to forewarn you?!

A note not to worry about strange 3am noises coming from the attached garage would have also prevented me thinking it was vengeful Spanish drug barons trying to get in to kill us (had watched too many episodes of Mad Dogs, I think). After 2 hours of trying to work out what the hell the emergency services phone number was in Majorca cursing the dodgy 3G Internet connection, and fighting over who was going to get the heaviest most lethal pottery vase as a weapon to hit invading hitmen over the head with, I realised that if someone WAS actually trying to break in then they would have succeeded by now. And that they probably wouldn't make their invasion noises regularly every 20 mins ending in a slightly whooshing watery noise and then stopping to have a rest. Yes, I finally twigged that it was just the boiler firing up but really, couldn't we have been forewarned of that in the instruction pack. Oh yes - there wasn't one! Grrrrr.....

Not an 'in cottage one' but an en route story.

We'd rented a cottage in Pembrokeshire and the instructions the owner had sent to find it were awful. After lots of driving round and DH being a typical bloke about asking for directions (pre sat nav days) he finally admitted defeat and said he'd pull over and ask the next person he saw.

Driving down the lane and he sees a man walking down it, can only see him from behind. As DH pulls level, lowers the window and says "excuse me" I'm rolling around the passenger footwell with silent tears streaming down my cheeks because I've seen what DH hadn't...

He'd stopped to ask directions from a blind man, complete with guide dog.

Ok so this one was more of a hotel....but reckon it still counts.

Xdp and I had booked a weekwnd away for valentines one year. Got shown to our room which was huuuuge. Proper old victorian features.....even the bathrrom looked like it hadnt been changed for 100 uears at least.

Massive a4 ringbinder of rules regs and instructions which included:

Please refrain from any lively activity on the bed as it is an antique.
Do not use the warderobe as it is an antique.
Dinner is at 6pm sharp.
No food is permitted in the rooms.
Do nrot eat the xhocolatws provided until you leave the room.
Do not deink the wine provided in the room. You may deink this on the terrace if it is fine weather.

The worst bit. There were 5 pages of info about a murder that went on in the grounds around 1900 ish. A man had murdered his lover and cut off her head hiding it in the bushes outside the terrace. Had all the gory details and everything!

Our valentines get away was not as passionate as previously hoped. :/

Omg, classics!

There were no little notes anywhere in the one I've just stayed in. And the owner was lovely and brought about a million extra towels when I asked for one extra one for the baby.

And she left wine and chocolates for us.

Most disappointing