Last month we were in the UK for a couple of days and we thoroughly enjoyed our shortbreak! You can read all about which places we visited in the Travel section of my blog, but today I will tell you about our holiday home, which was in fact our first encounter with Airbnb!

In the summer season, most self-catering companies let houses per week. As we would only be staying in the UK for 5 days ,we couldn’t find a holiday home on the sites we normally browse when travelling to the UK.

My daughter suggested we should try Airbnb. She had done so on several occasions and was always satisfied with her lodgings. So far I had always been quite hesitant towards Airbnb as you hear many dodgy things about it… but I decided to put my doubts aside and started my search.

I can immediately tell you that my first encounter with Airbnb was a very good one… I guess that for every dodgy story there are 100.000 stories that end well and I am happy to share mine 😀

Booking with Airbnb

Searching a property on Airbnb is very easy. You can fill in a few filters (location, dates, prices, whether you want just a room or an entire house/appartment,…) and then you can start browsing the map on which the potential properties are indicated.

Once you’ve made your choice, you set up an Airbnb account so you can contact the person who lets his property. You can ask them additional questions and book your holiday home.

We ended up renting ‘The Acorns‘ in Moorside/Marnhull in the Dorset countryside.

Our holiday home

On arrival we were greeted by Peter and Anne, the owners, whose house was next to our holiday home. They were very friendly and gave us all the information we needed, but they also gave us all the privacy we wanted.

Our holiday home was not very big, but it was certainly big enough for the four of us. We had all the things we needed and more!

On arrival we were welcomed by a well-stocked fridge and (delicious!!) homemade Dorset apple cake. The house was squeaky clean and towels, books, magazines, games, dvd’s and information leaflets were provided.

All rooms were decorated nicely. The fruit basket was filled with apples and bananas, there were plants and flowers and all these little details made it feel like a home away from home… we quickly vowed to be back!

The one downside perhaps was the bed… at home we’ve got a king sized bed and in this holiday home it was only 140 cm which is very narrow opposed to what we are used to!! But oh well… we found out that people don’t die from sleeping in a narrow bed 😉

The location

For a stay at The Acorns, you really need a car as it is situated in the North Dorset countryside. But for us the location was perfect! Rural, calm, quiet, scenic,… pure bliss!

 

Pubs and shops could be found a couple of kilometers away and the nearest larger town, Shaftesbury, was a 15 minute drive. Within a 30-60 minutes drive, we had so many things we could visit: quaint villages and quirky towns, castles and ruines, countryside and coastline,… and then there were the many hiking trails.

We really wished we could have stayed longer as there are so many things to see and do in Dorset!

Do you like to visit the English countryside or are you more a ‘bright lights big city’ person? Let me know in the comments!

Love, Kathleen

PS: I was stupid enough only to take detailed pictures of our holiday home. I meant to take pictures of the front and the back of the house, but I forgot…