Airbnb ! Holidays from Hell part 3 - April 2021
Did you
know the lockdown started on 21 March 2020. Thats over a year ago ! No wonder
so many of us booked holidays on the second week of April; the moment the rules were relaxed we were off. We even tried
to go before the end of lockdown but the lady we had booked our Airbnb break
with refused. We went to the Mendips, so we risked traffic hell for starters.
But we sailed through Vauxhall, Battersea and Chelsea, down the Westway to the
M4. We were driving passed the Ark after a mere hour of driving; like getting a
green light all the way from Lewisham to Heathrow.
Things were going so well. Too well. 4 hours later we found the cottage in deep Somerset. G, the host, met us and was charming and cheerful throughout. The cottage bore no resemblance to the place we had booked on the website. How do these things happen? We entered through double doors at the back of the extension, into a small room containing a table and sofa. We followed G into the main part of the house, well, I call it a house. The sink was under the stairs, which were as close to vertical as its possible to make. A bathroom had been squeezed in to the left. The bedroom was up the stairs, with the TV on a table. Cats could not be swung, anywhere. We bust and spilt things with monotonous regularity. Every time you filled the kettle a cup would crash to the ground, squeezed onto a drying rack directly where your arm needed to be to work the tap.
The heating
was by an air pump of some sort. The radiators wouldn’t feel hot to the touch
we were told. True, because they didn’t give out heat after sundown, which
meant the place felt like you were in a tent on the way to the pole in
midwinter. It was 1 centigrade outside, and the same inside. I awoke at 3 am
with blocks of ice on the end of my legs. What the hell? Oh , they used to be
my feet. I went downstairs to warm up, but that was even colder than upstairs.
I shivered in the bed, praying I would make it through the night.
Next day I was stiff, but a live stiff at least. We set out for Glastonbury. I followed JK’s directions and we drew up in the town square. We got out and looked around. I wondered where we were out loud, and two chaps replied “Shepton Mallet”. Oh well, the prison is remarkable. A huge wall used to keep the Krays locked up before they were famous. Suddenly I realized my back hurt. Then the pain kicked in proper. That dern bed in the icehouse had done for me. Next day I needed my partner to put my socks and shoes on, having walked through another pool of spilt tea. The pain, the wet and freezing feet, and all for £50 a night.
