This year, after having visited Bonnie Scotland for many years before, we went to the Castle Lomond on Loch Lomond, a truly beautiful lake and likewise surroundings. The Castle Lomond looks more like an old mansion than an actual Castle, yet the location is absolutely stunning.
We were there for a week and have used the apartment ( The Pipers ) as a base to sleep and eat, the rest of the time we were out and about. After arriving at the Castle there was nobody to meet or greet us, just a simple instruction on how to pull the keys from a keysafe. No friendly Hello how are you...nothing. We were running a bit late, that must be said but still.. Upon getting the key from the keysafe, we ent through the automatically opening gates. That does look fancy :) The parking is easy and there is enough space in the front of the Castle. Inside the Castle there was an eerie silence...as if nobody was there. We arrived in the evening so here and there we noticed some faint lights behind the windows, which suggested there should be more people there. Nobody was seen or heard. We went up the long stairs to the first floor. Opened the door to the property with curiosity and expectation. Quite quickly our anticipation faded after we walked through the property.
The Property
After entering you come into the Hall of the property, here you find the bathroom door, the bedroom door and the door to the kitchen-living-room.
Kitchen-Livingroom
Yes indeed, I say kitchen-living-room as the size of the room , which I estimate to be around 8 x 5 meters, was in majority a kitchen. A fairly large one at that, big enough for a family of 4 or 6 people. The kitchen is quite complete with fridge and freezer stocked in an island. There is a microwave and a full stove with a huge oven. There is a water kettle, but no coffee maker or machine whatsoever. So bring tea, but forget about coffee. ( We brought our own coffee maker ) . The kitchen is furthermore equipped with all you can think of, pans, bowls, cups, glasses, etc, etc. So you'd not expect the kitchen to miss the most bare essentials like the basic simple utensils such as spatulas, wooden spoons and similar items to actually cook your own diner, after all, that's what a kitchen is for. Apparently the current owners of this property only use it a few times a year and if they do, my guess is that the lady of the house doesn't do any cooking, because...how can you without the basics ?
Living-Room
The living room is not very big, it consists of a single armchair, a fairly large sofa - which doubles as an extra bed - and a coffee table. There's a TV and a DVD player, which work well, there were even a few old DVD movies in the TV cupboard.
Internet
The apartment has internet, but the modem itself has died a few years ago but the thing isn't ware it's not well anymore. We had to struggle to keep the ON button pressed because the connection would drop constantly due to the ON button popping up again and switching the modem OFF. So it's there but with this modem it's useless.
Lighting ( bring your sunglasses )
There's a lamp in the corner and there are two chandeliers on the ceiling. The chandeliers were stocked with modern LED lighting. No problem in itself but each Chandelier had about 8 light bulbs of 3000 kelvin that were at least 5 watt LED each, which is quite bright. Now imagine having two of these in such a small room.
Bathroom
The bathroom is equipped with a fixed shower head, a bath and a weird set of knobs that we were never ever able to fully get to grips with. There is a toilet and a wash bin. Behind the toilet there is a huge wall-size mirror. Ahum…
Looks nice and clean. Yet when you sit down on the toilet you will find there’s something missing. In this posh apartment there is NO toilet roll hanger, nothing to put a toilet roll in and apparently there hes never ever been one either ?! Weird ! So you’re stuck with holding the toilet roll in your hand. Not very comfy.
Coat Hangers
In the whole apartment there is no place to hang your coat….not in the Hall nor is there any way to hang your duster or similar in the bathroom.
Bedroom
The bedroom has a weird design and the bad is placed so that the door cannot open fully. There is a second door between the bedroom and the bathroom, which can be used as an alternative. The bed is quite comfy and we’ve slept well in it.
Again, nothing here to put your clothes on at night, not even a chair.
Diner Table
The website mentions that there is a large diner area…..sorry, forget about it, it’s just not there. The diner table is a fold-up table that is placed right next to the kitchen-island. Next to the diner table is a single diner table chair in a corner, there are three more of them in the hall (?! ). Do not try to put the table up in any fashion where you would need all four chairs as there just is NO SPACE whatsoever to do this. We ended up using 2 chairs with the diner table placed against the wall next to the TV. We could not find any other way to do it.
So in all fairness, this apartment needs a drastic overhaul, needs the basic kitchen utensils and a refurnishing.
Value For Money
So is this value for money ? Nope, not in my book, we paid about 550+ GBP for a week, yet after seeing all the issues that this apartment has, it's not worth more then 200 to 250 a week...and don't forget to bring your kitchen utensils...
We had sent a mail to the customer service who kindly said to send our mail through to the owners with our complaints in it. They ( the owners ) have yet to reply to our mail, guess they don't care.
