Anglesey Self Catering cottage, Tan Y Coed, Menai Bridge, sleeps 13

Filthy and Threadbare, shabby without the chic
Let's start off with the positives. The views from the garden over the Menai Straight and Bridge are stunning. If your lucky enough to have a warm sunny day relaxing outside. The house is massive, but only the master bedroom and lounge are a reasonable size, a lot is taken up with a bizarre staircase that a Cludo board would be proud of. However, the garden furniture is falling apart, and the path under the balcony decking needs a machete to get through. As you walk in the front door that you can only half open your greeted with that smell of Eau de Damp, threadbare carpets and furniture in the main lounge, and bizarrely personal photos everywhere of what must be the largest extended family in North Wales from the 70's to the Noughties. Moving back into the spooky hallway with a dressing box, yes I repeat, an (adult) dressing box, a piano with missing keys, a giant painting of 3 girls with the middle ones eyes following you down the corridor, snail or slug trails on the carpet, and an internal wall that is so wet it almost has water running down it when it rains (this is Wales), you realise that whoever had Tan Y Coed as their family holiday home left it 20 years ago and that's when the maintenance and upkeep ended. The billiard room has 7 reds and 16 pinks, but full size and useable if you exchange 6's for 1's. Liberal signs festoon everywhere, with guidence on the do's, don'ts and quirks of the house. There is a wet room with wet suits to use for water sports, but not sure if the paddle board and kayak on the decking are for guest use or not, plus to get to said decking one needs to use Google maps and the front steps by the drive rather than the rear steps to the deepest Congo. You will now get to the smaller rear lounge with the earliest version of Sonys flat screen TV, Sky, and the hardest settee known to man. All seats are, to be blunt, knackered, threadbare, dust ridden, and basically filthy. Cobwebs are everywhere. We now enter the kitchen, brace yourselves. The table that seats 10, 12 at a push, needs a flipping good scrub in fact a deep sanding down and re-varnish, sticky doesn't explain its lack of hygiene, at least your plates won't slip off onto the tiles. Kitchen gadgets are everywhere, but you'd be taking risk to use the bread maker and all electrical devices and lights have PAT testing stickers of which ran out a year ago. You would assume Sykes would be checking up on this. A glance at the main consumer units indicates their next inspection date was due January 2006! The pantry, and its leaking fridge freezer, explained away by another sign saying that "don't be concerned about water on the floor this is a outside pantry" The scullery, has a washing machine, the tumble dryer now works after I cleaned the filters. Here resides the high level cobweb feather dusters which haven't been used since Agragog from Harry Potter and her children moved in. The "Sheila maid" from the ark has been so well used its wooden cross bars are now black, so just hang up anything white for your own stripped t-shirts. The main master suite with its own en-suite bathroom has stunning views of the Menai with warnings on how to open and close the heavy curtains. The 6' bed is, to be fair, comfortable, but what is most disconcerting is the massive wall hanging Bayeux tapestry behind the bed with huge stain in the middle from what must have been a "I can't be bothered to go to the en-suite" moment. The other bedrooms are all dated, with random sinks in the corner, stained and bare carpets throughout, and one bathroom has a Jackson Pollock inspired mold design on the wall. In fact damp mold is to be found all around. However we seem to be the only guest's to feel their ?4k for a weeks family holiday, which after the pandemic, has been long looked forward too, was ruined by such a filthy and rundown house. The guest book and other reviews seem to be glowing for some bizarre reason. The £16K a month income the owners and Sykes are getting needs to be reinvested in Tan Y Coed and not the other mansion(s) that are on the hung on the hall walls for us to view.
markpG5230IN
2022-08-28