Avis " ESPECIALLY FOR TWO" : A cottage in AUBAIS 8km from SOMMIERES

Thank you Bruno and Sylvie for this very encouraging, supportive review of your stay in our riverside cottage. It is more than we could have dared to hope for!! All we ever want to do when offering our holiday cottage, in the south of France is to provide a venue that affords those guests the chance to have a lovely holiday in a peaceful setting. We are so thrilled that you found it to be just that for you. Each guest that comes may have different priorities....canoeing down the river, sitting reading beneath the shade of the huge cypress trees or just watching nature all round. You obviously found many ways to take advantage of the environment and we are pleased. We are also pleased that the pages of potential places to visit during your stay proved useful. We are certain that most future visitors will be as intrigued by the Camargue region as you! We thank you for your kind words for Mary and me as well as Luciana, with whom you must have had a great relationship. Thanks also for your kind words written in our holiday book, left at the cottage. You really have gone to a lot of trouble to afford us your very real support . We thank you for that. Best wishes to you both. Mary and Graham

Thank you so much for this very supportive review, Julia. It has finally appeared on our VRBO site! We are just delighted that you and Bernd so enjoyed your stay at the cottage. You could not have been kinder in your comments and we hope that you will now be settled back in your own home. Enjoy the rest of your summer! Best wishes Mary and Graham PS. We shall send Luciana a copy of your comments. We know what an important part she will have played during your stay!

Samantha and Simon, Thank you very much for this very supportive review. We are very dependent on positive feedback from our guests and your response could not have been more generous. We hope that you may wish to return at some future date! In the meantime we send you our very best wishes........happy holidays!

Thank you both for this generous 5* review. We are so pleased that you enjoyed your stay and we know that you particularly loved being on the river. Have a wonderful summer. Best wishes Mary and Graham

Thank you Bruno and Simone for your 5 star rating. 'Idyllic country house' is what we love to see! We send you particular thanks for the very generous e-mail that you sent to us personally. We are thrilled that the house and the environs were exactly what you wanted and that you so enjoyed your holiday. All we ever want is for our guests to have a wonderful stay. Enjoy the rest of your summer! Best wishes Mary and Graham

Good afternoon Claire and Peter, Thank you so very much for this wonderfully supportive review of your stay in our 'cottage by the river' which we have always seen as 'ESPECIALLY FOR TWO'. You could not have been more generous in your encouraging words for what we have sought to provide for our guests. You have included so many attributes and painted an idyllic picture ! THANK YOU SO MUCH! It is a real thrill for us to have guests like you who spontaneously share such encouraging feelings for any prospective guests to read. You have used language that we hope expresses the real essence of what we want people to experience staying at our cottage within the beautiful Languedoc region of France. We shall pass on this response to Luciana and Fred, both of whom played such an important role during your holiday. Your very full description certainly reminded us of all that we should be grateful for when we return for our Autumn stay!! Enjoy the rest of your summer wherever you might be! Mary and Graham xx

Thank you so much for this fantastically supportive review Laurence and Joshua. It is always so very encouraging for us when we learn that our guests have loved the cottage as much as we do. It helps enormously to have Luciana there for you. We are very lucky! Enjoy the rest of your summer. All best wishes from Mary and Graham

The stay from 23July -6 August (LHC my ref) is one that we are trying to forget. We did not ask for a review because we did not want to be forced to respond ..But LHC's review submitted on 27.8.22 was addressed to prospective holidaymakers, who we now ask to please read also the reviews of new guests each side of LHC's stay! AK ( 16 -23 July) and BD (6-20 August) indeed any of the reviews pre Covid. This affords you a fairer perspective of a potential stay with us. Our cottage is rented out for 8 weeks (2022) directly with us to returning guests. Only 4 weeks this season with VRBO these 4 reviews are therefore very important to us. Fortunately we had a VRBO Resolution Specialist to help us. She has kept a record on file so we do not need to spend too much time defending our case in this response with too many details. Before (LHC) came they knew there was no air-conditioning. We knew how important it was to them. A booking was not expected! We knew that we could not provide a fitted a/c system until our extended stay in September. There were other negatives! SO we offered them an opt out. We would cancel their booking and refund them 100% of the rental fee. Not acceptable. They came and the whole sorry story began. On 29th July we made our final communication with them offering £500 just for them to move out of our beautiful home to one that they had seen was more suitable.. "for the higher end more discerning guests" as they saw themselves. They refused this offer. We were saddened that our housekeeper felt that she was not afforded any respect. LHC refused to allow her entry into the house when an engineer was eventually able to come to inspect the TV, or to allow her to attend to the pool mid-week as an extra visit during the very hot weather. She had to explain again that the time of departure was 10am to allow professional cleaners in. LHC refused to leave until 11am leaving the house in such a state that the cleaners had to go elsewhere and come back( adding cleaning time) We have photos of the state of the house on their leaving! On other specifics...the bed is a standard size quality bed from M&S. Our settee again, from House of Fraser, is a quality one with a range of well padded , feathered cushions. It has never been described as 'below standard height'. Our own details online state "regrettably disabled persons would have difficulty accessing the canoe on the river." Access to the pool is down 'the pool steps with handrails', a net is left for guests to remove the fallen needles as and when. The robot is set by the pool specialist and cleans the base and sides beautifully. The large french doors may be left open when the house is occupied, if guests so choose. There is no 'main road' just a very quiet country lane/road and the large metal entry gate can be locked as can the gate leading down to the river. The plancha has been much appreciated by other guests. We suspect that it was not left long enough to reach the high temperatures it is capable of 550 -800 degrees F to sear and cook food. We shall take on board the observation of 'no frying pan' . In our defence it cannot have been very high on earlier guests' wish lists. We have always viewed our house as a base for guests to enjoy all of the outdoor spaces, in the grounds, on the river and in the glorious, local environment...not staying indoors. We could go on .....but enough said! Our French home has had our love and attention and we are very proud of how others have viewed it. We have had reviews from guests either side of this couple which were excellent, bearing no resemblance to this review. Sadly they were booked on a subsidiary site so that they cannot be viewed here. You can contact us directly if you want to see these reviews.