Decoy Farm House

Great location and beautiful view for this farmhouse. The kitchen/dining/outdoor area is truly stunning. Beautifully decorated and fabulously spacious and comfortable. The TV room is tiny and the bedrooms are very small by comparison, with small beds, no mirror in the bathroom and no toiletries. I was expecting more space. That said, the service was excellent, it was super clean and had just the right levels of basic supplies for us. The area is gorgeous and Somerton is especially so, with great food places, with sellers who take great care of the provenance of their wares, but for a local market. Its not done for the tourists. Very special. White Hart was a brilliant pub/restaurant and the waiter even gave us a lift home.

The house itself has huge potential with great design and lots of charm. Unfortunately our stay was substantially marred on a few accounts. Firstly, the cleanliness was really shocking. We were a January booking and it's possible there hadn't been anyone in the house for a while, which would explain some of these, but I would have expected a thorough check before we arrived. There were mouse droppings all over the bedrooms including the beds. Stains on bed sheets and mould in the showers. Dusty cobwebs in most rooms (not recent!). A soap dispenser that produced a disgusting dark brown sludge when used. And the hot tub was filled with thousands of black flakes. When we flagged this there was an offer to come clean, but we had dealt with most issues ourselves rather than stay in the dirty environment. The one thing they were able to do was send somebody to clean the hot tub - he told us he regularly needs to do this because it's due to the degradation of the hot tub cover and it's a known issue to the owners / managers. Sure enough, the issue was back after a few days. I don't know why they don't replace the cover if it's been going on a while. The hot tub was the other main problem. This was a critical element to us - we had emailed to check about it before booking due to reviews mentioning issues, but was told these issues were due to user error and better instructions were now in place. In reality there are two sets of conflicting instructions and the correct ones seem to be drawn on with sharpie. Nonetheless we were super vigilant about only pressing a few buttons that controlled the jets and the lights. On Wednesday afternoon we realised it had dropped in temperature to 20 degrees. At this point we tried a few different buttons (based on the instructions), confirmed it wasn't off, and managed to activate a preheat setting which hadn't previously been showing (including on previous days when the heat was fine). The hot tub engineer was sent again on Thursday, and he confirmed the settings were correct and made no changes. We periodically checked the temperature and it increased incredibly slowly, sometimes with no change for several hours. It ultimately took until Friday late evening to be warm enough to use (33 degrees) although it was still several degrees colder than the temperature being aimed for. I still don't know why the hot tub lost temperature so much, and I can't believe it takes more than 48 hours to (partially) heat up again. Customer service was mixed. I appreciated they sent the hot tub engineer a few times, but the problems were ultimately not resolved and shouldn't have been there in the first place. We did get a 10% refund following the holiday, but to be frank it was so disappointing not to be able to use the hot tub for most of our time there, if we had known it was likely to be dirty / cold we would never have booked in the first place. In communication with customer service, there was also a tendency to blame us for the hot tub heating - e.g. suggesting we turned it off and that was the problem (we did test the on/off button to double check if we'd accidentally switched it off but switched it back on immediately when it was clear that wasn't the problem, and the heat had dropped to 20 BEFORE we did that); suggesting we had left the cover off the entire time so that was why the hot tub was struggling (obviously the cover was on). I would really recommend against staying here if the hot tub is important to you, and be aware the cleanliness standards might be low.

Our overall stay at decoy farm house was lovely. There was quite a few cobwebs hanging around so maybe a thorough clean is needed. Also neither of the hoovers worked to enable us to Hoover throughout the week which is needed after the grass was cut and the dogs were bringing bits of grass in. Another downside was the hot tub not working. They did come out to look at it once but it still didn’t work. The hot tub maintenance man did offer to come out to look for us but this was on our last day and therefore was no point. Very disappointing as we picked this house because of the hot tub and was unable to use it.

We had an absolutely amazing stay at decoy farm. We were there for a week and it was a dream, plus I think the bed in the main bedroom may be the most comfortable one I’ve slept in for awhile. The views are absolutely unreal and the Sun was out for most of our visit. We couldn’t have asked for more.

We were pleasantly surprised when we walked into the Decoy Farmhouse! The decor/aesthetic was sensational! It was beautifully decorated. The walls of windows overlooking the green pastures and hills was magical. It feels so secluded. We had no problem finding places to eat and shop nearby so you're not totally isolated in the country. We will be back!