3 Valley View Lodges

The location was ideal for our planned return to the Yorkshire Moors, but we ended up coming home early and spending more time in the car on the moors because we didn’t want to go back to the lodge. We wouldn’t stay there again. The cleanliness was poor from the start. There was a large urine splash or stain on the toilet seat, which I cleaned myself. Under the covers I found two long black hairs on the sheet and one on the pillow, each about 9 to 10 inches, plus a short curly hair at the foot of the bed. Dog hair and dirt covered the floor and lounge mat. My socks picked up so much of it on the first day that I switched to Crocs as soon as we got back each day. After knocking against the wall in my sleep, I pulled the bed out and saw that the carpet behind it hadn’t been vacuumed in quite a while. The curtains were so thin and see-through that they were almost useless, so we hung the bed blankets over them to block some light. When I took one off, I saw something brown on it. It might have been chocolate, or something else, and I didn’t investigate. The shower also leaked at the back near the toilet, leaving a pool of water. We had tea, coffee and biscuits on arrival, but no milk, either in the fridge or as sachets. It was the first time we couldn’t make a cup of tea when we arrived. After the long journey, I had to go back out to Kirkbymoorside to buy milk. We also wanted to sit on the decking in the evening, but every time we tried, dogs were howling and barking nonstop. It was the same in the morning, and on an evening walk it was all we could hear. We found out there are hunting hound kennels across the fields. That noise was a major issue for us, and had we known about it, we wouldn’t have booked the lodge. The barking wasn’t the owners’ fault.