Wild Ocean Retreats, Sea Palling - Norfolk

I have to support the earlier "Negative Review", the same thing has just happened to ourselves.

We have just spent the last week at this cottage, in all a great location and lovely beach. The day after we got home, my wife received in words, a rude email from Lorraine accusing us of leaving the cottage dirty, losing the brush for the dust pan, damaging items that we had not used and allowing our dog to sleep on one of the beds upstairs and leaving its fur around the place. Hence withholding some of the damage deposit.

Firstly, we do not have a dog, the so called fur was from our grandsons cuddly toy which happens to be an Old English sheepdog. Anyone can tell the difference between synthetic and real fur! Anyhow, I do not think there will be many dogs that could climb the spiral staircase! Then the so-called damaged item, the toilet brush. This was never used by ourselves, so how could we of damaged it? The missing dustpan brush was in the cupboard with the dustpan when we left.

As to leaving the cottage dirty after we left, this was not the case, it was cleaner after we left! Upon our arrival, we found one of the teatowels outside hanging over a garden chair. We had to wash some of the mugs because they were still unwashed from the previous users. Each room had cobwebs all over the ceilings with the twin bedroom being worst. We needed to go around to get the worst of these cobwebs cleaned up. One night I had to catch eighteen spiders from the twin bedroom before our grandson would settle down for the night. There was also a constant presence of flies in the kitchen and blocks of mice bait being used in the kitchen cupboards, which is the wrong type of pest control to use when children are in the vicinity.

SO BEWARE, it seems that Lorraine will try to find any excuse to withhold your £100 "DAMAGE DEPOSIT"!

We are not interested in other peoples reviews, one mans meat etc etc and so on. But I just had to write when I noticed the negative review below. If that stops anyone booking then you are mad and dont deserved this darling little place anyway.

Lorraine is such a lovely person, clever,helpful and will go beyond to make sure you have a great holiday,our holiday was fab and I work for a newspaper and have mentioned this cottage at every chance I get.

Dont be put off - its wonderful, and the products for sale from Lorraine are far better than any in Body shop.

This cottage is just lovely, we are due to go back this year with our dogs, last year we took 3 dogs, two labs and a jack russel and we are very experienced in animal care as we own our own doggy hotel so know how to set a standard which Lorraine does very well. We too are amazed by the negative review, Lorraine could not be more helpful, the cottage is delightful, the fire is lovely, its clean, peaceful, has a lovely welcome pack left by Lorraine with all her home made treats, she sent us an email to thank us for leaving the cottage so clean and tidy, we have three malting dogs but there was no complaint of dog hair !! nothing that a vac didnt fix and respect for someone elses property. We also have customers who use our doggy hotel who think very highly of Lorraine and the cottage in fact it was they who recommended and they go back regularly. Its a quaint beautiful tranquil little bolt hole to escape from and therefore cannot reconcile the negative review when all we can say is positive comments, good value for money, provided by an honest person who returned our damage deposit without question. I suppose it all comes down to standards, ours are very high and we wouldnt dream of leaving the cottage in a less than perfect state in which we found it, therefore I can only obviously be objective here, but our subjective experience of this cottage and the owner certainly does not match with the one and only negative review I have read on here.

In the lead up to our break at the cottage, Lorraine (the owner) couldn't have been more helpful with lots of local insight and hints and tips so we could get the most out of our week in Sea Palling. When we pulled up to the cottage for the first time, it looked just as it did in the pictures. Beautiful! But the best was yet to come, because when we opened the door to go in, the inside of the cottage was so much more than the pictures on the website showed. It was really lovely. There are a couple of low beams but that's part of the pleasure of staying in a very old property that has bags of character.

Waiting for us were some very welcome essentials, including the most amazing marmalade made by Lorraine. We spent our whole week wishing the cottage was ours and our two (by now beach-bum) dogs did not want to leave!

The negative review of this cottage is bizarre. I've stayed there twice and am returning for a further week in June. The owners are very friendly and welcoming, but they're also unintrusive. They're genuinely concerned that you have a good time, helpful and kind.

Beautiful setting, quiet and tranquil. The beach, less than five minutes' walk away, is lovely.

Lovely cottage, too. Comfortable, well furnished -- and I never had any trouble with the fire, so don't understand that either! I go there to recharge the batteries and couldn't really wish for a nicer place to stay. Thoroughly recommended: ignore the naysayers!

The cottage itself was nice enough although very low door ways, my Husband and his Dad hit their heads many times. The open fire was a nice touch but the smoke blows back into the room unless you keep the doors shut,which is hard when you're lighting it! I ended up feeling quite sick with that and the fire had to be abandoned.

We took our two very well behaved (i'm an animal behaviourist!) dogs and there were great walks near by but dont go with dogs as that is where our nightmare began. We left the house clean and tidy, not perfect, but ready for a vacuum and change of sheets/towels etc. We did no damage bar a stain on the oven glove, nothing a wash wouldn't sort.

We stuck to ALL rules regarding dogs (not on furniture or upstairs, which they're not allowed to do anyway at home due to allergies).We recieved an email from the owner  that day after departing detailing a list of frankly ficticous claims such as us having let the dogs upstairs (again, my husband is allegic so the dogs have to sleep downstairs) and that this would cost 50 pounds (!!!). Then she said the cushions had hairs on then,which anyone who owns dogs will understand that despite my best effort and twice daily grooming they shed and it ends up everywhere, and needed replacing!

She complained the shower was filthy, we had been there 4 nights and I wiped it down each day, how exactly a shower gets filthy so quickly i'll never know!

Basically she wrote a list of claims and used the dogs as a reason to keep our 100 pound deposit. I replied (after recovering from being totally confused and upset at her accusations) and took her email point by point but there was nothing that would make her change her mind and give me back the deposit I am owed. She then days later after I had replied claimed for actual damage as opposed to "cleaning", strange how it took so long when she had supposedly spent hours cleaning after we left.

It's a real shame as it totally ruined our memory of what was a lovely holiday (nice area), it made a resonable cottage very expensive for us and most of all made me very wary. We've stayed in lots of places and NEVER had a complaint, we always leave the place neat and tidy and to be peanalised and insulted by them was hurtful to say the least. I would avoid it if you wish to keep your deposit.