Sharon and I are fairly well travelled and over the years we’ve stayed in a wide variety of apartments, Gites, B & Bs, private homes and hotels in Europe, Australia and the U.S.A. In Spain, we’ve usually stayed in hotels, but for our recent holiday with friends, we stayed in a 6-7 berth villa near Salobreña on the Costa Tropical, east of Malaga.
Sadly, on balance, I cannot say that the accommodation was one of the best I’ve ever stayed in. I decided not to put this review on Trip Advisor as it really is NOT very good. However, if anyone searches for Villa Maeve, Salobreña – they may find this report and make up their own minds.
First of all, some good bits; Villa Maeve has fabulous, commanding views down along the Costa Tropical on the southern coast, east of Malaga. The view takes in Salobreña, with its white painted houses and hill top castle, as well as the coastline down beyond Motril. From some points of the terrace, we could even see the snow-capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
We had arranged for the pool to be heated, so that we could swim when we got here, but soon noted that the cost for that was going to be prohibitive¹. So, we had the pool-heating turned off fairly early. That’s a lesson learned for using pools out of season.
The WiFi was good, efficient and reliable, and there was U.K. T.V., but we didn’t turn that on, so cannot comment².
The wood fire in the living room was a life-saver. It burned fuel efficiently and kept us warm on an evening.
The house is heated by solid wall heaters or warm air machines, but as the lounge/living area is an open space with single-glazed windows and an outside door that is draughty and which has no curtain – we chose to burn wood rather than electricity. Each bag cost between €4.45 and €4.95 and we burned oak, pine and olive wood. The olive burned best I think, but without the means of chopping the logs smaller, we got very little chance of using only olive. We had to use pine to get a blaze going before adding the huge olive logs and then we had to turn the olive constantly to get it to burn through.
In spring and summer, this could be a fabulous place to stay, but now, in a wintery January, it’s just quite chilly up on the hillside. Also, because of the time of year all of the eateries we’d planned to use were closed, which meant we had to eat-in most of the time. Which meant we HAD to use the house.
The house itself was a huge disappointment. We wouldn’t normally bother about the odd cracked tile, faulty light bulb or missing door knob but this place needs a good bit of TLC. Doors and windows rattled and didn’t close efficiently; and, along with tired, worn and dusty wall hangings and decorations, gave the place a ‘used’ feel. The floors and surfaces were clean, probably part of a pre-guest-arrival routine, but the pictures and ornaments (statuary) were very dirty/dusty.
The electric points were many, but many didn’t work. I suspect that the circuitry is original and that it has not been updated – ever. My EU/Spanish extension cable (brought to use for charging phones etc.) did not fit in any of the sockets as the pins were too fat. The water boiler wasn’t wired directly into anything; it was plugged into an extension cable. The ceiling lights were all very dull and we had to keep moving the upright standard lamps for better lighting.
All very slapdash.
The cooker-timer could not be turned off, so there was a constant tick, tick, tick from the kitchen. The lights in every room were hit and miss – some worked and some didn’t.
On the plus side, the twin and double beds were comfortable and warm enough, even though the rooms were cold and some of the bedding was worn. The master room had another double bed that couldn’t be used because there was no quilt for it. We were told that this bed is never made up with a quilt!
Yet, I would defy anyone to sleep in this house, in January, without a quilt. As I said above, January in this area is fairly chilly.
Notes:
1 – We hadn’t known about extra electricity charges until a deposit had been taken and then didn’t know about the pool being ‘un’ heated, and having to ‘heat’ it until a week or so before our visit.
2 – They also had a German T.V. receiver – which we also didn’t use.
Saturday Walks 