Do not book with Sykes! Upon arrival and after having getting lost due to the place being hard to find, the owner was quite rude asking why we couldn’t understand simple instructions and did we not know our left from our right! Entering the property, immediately hit with a strong damp smell and hoped it was initial mustiness as it may not have been rented for a while. Wish I’d read the reviews but booked in haste due to Covid being so rife at the location we were in previously! Property was cold and no wood to be seen for the wood burner. Small radiators were dotted around but obviously not adequate for the size of the property. Most plug sockets had rodent repellents plugged into them which was slightly un-nerving. Couldn’t unpack due to bedroom furniture wreaking of old/damp smell and the huge amount of fabric softener used on the bed linen (to mask the damp smell) made us feel quite sick! We couldn’t get the en-suite shower to below boiling point but luckily there was another in the twin bedded room next to ours. My parents room didn’t smell quite as damp as luckily they had the one without the whole that had leaked when it rained previously. So glad they didn’t have our room as the bat flying around due to a gaping whole between the beams, in the middle of the night would have frightened my Mom half to death. Also with my Dads COPD, the damp would have got on his chest. It was bad enough in the lounge and we discovered the paint peeling off around the window and the walls were turning black. As there was nothing the owner could have done as a quick fix to sort the damp problem out whilst we were there, we decided to leave the next morning especially after finding rodent droppings in the kitchen! All in all l, we had spent one night in the cottage from hell which didn’t even deserve one out of the four ticks that Sykes had awarded it! Sykes have been very unsupportive and couldn’t even be bothered to look into our issue and just kept emailing back asking me to quote a reference number they’d given our supposed complaint! I did so on each occasion, only to be given the same response every time - infuriating!! Only after contacting hometogo who I originally booked with, did they reply with a response they would speak to the owner and send someone to inspect the property! Of course they took the owners word that there is nothing wrong and couldn’t see why we only stayed one night (I have never deserted a holiday property in my life before)!! And apparently they sent someone over to inspect who also could not see why we felt any reason to leave!!!! I am going to take this further as they should not be allowed to continue to rip people off and there seems to be a recurring habit of people being robbed of their security bond by being blamed for ridiculous reasons of damage, which in many cases was already done! Sykes Cottages and their many subsidiaries (devised to con people further) should be struck off in my opinion as there are thousands of unhappy customers, which in itself proves what a dispicable company they are! See Facebook group Sykes Unhappy Customers for true reviews! AVOID at all costs