National Trust holidays are a mixed experience.We booked two this year aiming to be close to a beach.We just came back from the last one in West LLansallos in Cornwall.The house is spacious and well decorated and furnished and would have been fine except for a few problems:On our second night a pipe burst in the downstairs bathroom spurting water throughout the ground floor. There were no instructions as to how to find the shutoff valve which took us some time to locate and then it took four people and all of the towels in the house to mop up the flood. We called the emergency number and the service they provided was awful. They could not even transcribe our phone number correctly.The caulking around the shower was leaking water which was damaging the ceiling in the hallway. We pointed this out to the plumber who caulked the shower when he repaired the pipe in the bathroom.We were very disappointed that once again the description of the cottage misrepresented its proximity to the beach. The description of the cottage says it is a short walk to the beach. It is 30 minutes along a very uneven quite steep sloping path. My guests said that to describe this as a short walk to the beach is “ridiculous”.This is the second National Trust cottage that we had had this description problem with this year. It is poor practice to lure people to stay in accommodation which is misrepresented like this.It is also very disappointing that they do not seem to care very much about the poor standards -- judging by the weak reaction to the lack of an effective response/apology for the disruption and misleading their guests. Indeed even months later the description on the first cottage we stayed in is STILL misleading -- saying the coastal path is on the Doorstep !!! A doorstep several fields and a twenty minute walk away.So much for "Trust"
