How to Book Christmas in a Holiday Cottage So You Get to Enjoy It Too
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Look at any holiday cottage advertised for Christmas and you will see the same scene: the fire lit, the tree up and a table laid for ten, every linen napkin folded into a swan. At home I have never once found the time, or the energy, for swans. Between the children, the cooking and the cousins, our napkins are paper ones, and the only folding they get is the folding they came with in the packet. But a few days away in a cottage, with nowhere to rush to and nothing to tidy first, might just be the year you finally learn to fold a swan. Or at least a duck. Lovely is well within reach. Effortless only takes a little planning.
I have done the big rented house once, for my mother-in-law's birthday: an old rectory in Wales with a jacuzzi, a cinema room and more staircases than any family strictly needs. What the photographs didn't prepare me for was the bathrooms. There were three, which sounds generous until you do the arithmetic. One belonged to my mother-in-law, by right of birthday. The second had a shower so narrow you washed whichever side of you was facing the tap and hoped for the best. That left one bathroom for the rest of us, and I spent the weekend with my ear to its door like a safecracker, listening for any sign of life and still getting a firm “Occupied!”
We had a wonderful weekend all the same, and it taught me to look past the pretty photographs and read the small print before I book.
At Christmas the small print matters even more, because the whole family arrives at once, with expectations and a turkey. So before you fall for the photographs, here is what I would check.
The bathrooms
This is the first thing I look for, even before the price. I want a bathroom of my own. Not out of grandeur: I have teenage nephews. Teenagers go into a bathroom the way other people go on holiday, and with them in the house a free bathroom is something you hear about but never see. So count the bathrooms against the bedrooms before you book. The number of bathrooms is on every listing, and it is the one figure there worth reading twice.
Then look closely at the bathroom photographs. Are there hooks for towels and dressing gowns, or will everything end up on the floor? Is there a shelf, a ledge, anywhere at all for the soap and the shampoo? A surprising number of beautiful old bathrooms have nowhere to put a bottle. You balance the shampoo on the hot tap and the soap on the cold one, and by Wednesday you can tell from the thud alone which of them has fallen this time.
One more thing for the bathroom: toilet paper. Two rolls on the windowsill are a kind welcome and a wild underestimate, and on the 25th there is nowhere to buy more. Pack your own. It is the least festive thing you will put in the car, and by Boxing Day it will be the most appreciated present in the house.
The machines
A cottage for ten without a dishwasher is not a holiday, it is a washing-up rota. Check there is a dishwasher and a washing machine. A week with children is a week of muddy knees, jam on the sleeves and a mountain of damp towels, and a surprising number of cottages have neither machine. If the listing doesn't mention them, ask. While you are at it, look for a vacuum cleaner too. Children shed crumbs the way a Christmas tree sheds needles, and you will be finding both in the sofa long after the presents are open.
The oven
Holiday-let kitchens are fitted out for easy summer cooking: one big lasagne, a salad the children won't touch and a crumble if you are feeling ambitious. Our Christmas is a different matter. I fry carp and make potato salad on Christmas Eve, as we do in the Czech Republic. My English family insists on turkey the next day. My husband finds both bland and says so, with the quiet persistence of a man lobbying for a goose. That makes two Christmas dinners in two days, one cottage oven and a standing motion on poultry. Ask the owner how big the oven is before you book. Better to find out now that the turkey won't fit than on Christmas morning, with the goose lobby already gathering in the kitchen
The table
A cottage that sleeps twelve has twelve places to lie down, which is not the same as twelve places to sit. The beds are counted on the listing; the chairs are left to your imagination, and Christmas lunch is eaten sitting down, all at once, at one table. So count the dining chairs in the photographs. If there are eight, your uncle is eating perched on a bar stool from the kitchen island, and he will mention it every Christmas for a decade.
The fire
Finding firewood in the middle of the countryside over Christmas is harder than it sounds. The farm shop is shut, the garage sold its last net of logs to the cottage down the lane, and a fireplace with nothing to burn is just a draughty hole in the wall. So check before you go whether the wood is provided or whether you are expected to bring your own. Check, too, what kind of fire it is. I have written a whole piece on telling a wood burner from a fireplace that is only there to be photographed.
The sofa
I don't have a dog, and I would rather not share a sofa with one, even one that has already gone home. Dogs lie on sofas in ways no amount of hoovering quite lets you forget, and I like to settle down with my Christmas pudding without wondering which end of a labrador was there before me. If you feel the same, check whether the cottage takes pets; the listing will say. If your dog is coming for Christmas, run the same check the other way. Plenty of good houses welcome them, sofa and all.
The times
Check the arrival and departure times before you fall in love. Some cottages want you out early on the last morning, which with children means packing the car the night before. Some won't let you in until late afternoon, which in December means arriving in the dark. And plenty change over on a fixed day of the week while Christmas falls wherever it likes, so make sure your dates and theirs agree before you book leave or tell the cousins.
The games room
With teenagers in the house, the best room in a winter cottage is a games room. A billiard table or a table-tennis table is the only thing I know that will peel a teenager off a phone for longer than a meal, and plenty of larger cottages have one; it will be in the photographs. Failing that, look for a cupboard of board games, though a holiday-cottage Monopoly is usually missing the dice, half the money and the little dog, so it is worth bringing a set from home. Check there is a television as well, because at three o'clock on the 25th half the family will want the King's speech and the other half a nap in front of it.
The shops
In England and Wales the big shops are closed by law on Christmas Day, and most village shops close anyway. Find out where the nearest supermarket is and what time it shuts on Christmas Eve, then shop as if the cottage were an island. It is, for about thirty-six hours.
Christmas, as advertised
None of this is meant to put you off. It is simply the difference between a cottage Christmas that matches the listing photos you fell for and one that only looks that way from the doorway. Sort out the bathrooms, the chairs and the wood early, and Christmas itself gets a great deal easier.
By four o'clock on Christmas Day the fire is going, the plates are still on the table and the house has gone quiet. A teenage nephew has nodded off on the sofa with his phone, Grandpa in the armchair with the remote, and if you ask either of them later, they were only resting their eyes. It will not look quite like the listing. It will be better: your uncle has a proper chair, there is enough toilet paper to last until Boxing Day and, when you knock on the bathroom door, for once there is no answer.
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This post contains affiliate links: if you book or buy through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend cottages I’d book for my own family, and yes, I have counted the bathrooms. Read the full disclosure.
