Where's the worst place you've ever stayed?

You were unlucky Stansgran. We've had loads of holidays through Cottages4you and never had a bad one! What a shame!

An apartment in Marmaris in Turkey-1994-the mattresses were so damp that we took them off the beds and stood them on end to air on the balcony-after a couple of hours they were standing in pools of water which had drained out of them.
We gave my elderly aunt the only decent bed,my son slept on the floor and my husband and I balanced on the narrowest sofabed ever made.

And what's with 4 cups 4 plates 4 bowls for 4 people-don't they think some one might want soup and pudding or even a serving dish. Sorry-I'm just bitter at the little cost which would have made things better-curtains dishes-oh stop it...

Just come back from it. Early. Chalet in a beautiful setting but what is up with these owners? Mildew to every window and soaking the curtains and lining the fridge. Dim lighting-possible to read in bed but I like reading and don't want to go to bed at 8.30 (we took the GCs to the Lakes at short notice and booked through Cottages4you) so there was nothing much available tho' I'm sure we could have done better going on spek as we were told that the Lakes were 40% down on the usual occupation. The pillows were lifeless, the decor 70s the dishwasher broken the remote held together with elastoplast and the toaster dangerous. Of course we complained and the owners appeared with a new toaster and tried to mend the dishwasher and then cut the grass and tidied the outside-should have been checked by every change of customer and the people who owned it had the silly excuse that the customers didn't tell them. If I'm paying £800 per week and then they expect me to tell them if something is wrong they should n't be in this business but obviously there are idiots like us who can't book hols a year in advance.

Sorry still livid

Considering the huge amount of travelling I have done in the last thirty years I have been extraordinarily lucky. My worst holiday was camping near Plockton, which is very beautiful but the camp site was vastly over-crowded with just one unisex lavatory for about 80 tents. Fortunately, we had towed our 21' sailing boat up from the Wirral, and it had a chemical toilet on board. It rained every day and my lovely ex made friends with a couple and went to the pub in the village every night, leaving me to entertain my 10 and 8 year old girls with just a camping lantern. They, and their dad, loved the holiday, as they all enjoyed messing about in boats, but I was pretty fed up after two weeks of cooking on a two-burner camping-gaz cooker and washing up in about an inch of tepid water. We sold all the camping gear as soon as we got home.
I always post a review of my holiday accommodation on Trip Advisor and I would certainly post one telling the exact truth about some of the places that have been mentioned.
Sometimes, you just get lucky - Granjura and I had a really lovely hotel in Sharm this year - it was a pleasure to be able to give it a very good review.

A holiday flat in Scarborough in October comes to mind. Husband was playing in a 2 day chess tournament there, so the 2 children & I had brisk walks in howling rainy gales along the prom to escape from the damp, dreary flat. It was so chilly & horrible we put the kids in the living room to sleep (there was heating in there) and we slept in a forbidding unheated, damp & smelly bedroom. Kitchen equiment was vile - lots of rusty cutlery which I left lined up on the table for the landlady to see. We left early, as soon as the tournament ended. I told the landlady we were off & were only paying for the days stayed, not for the week we'd booked. On the way home we all sang with joy and our son confessed that he'd written on a notice inside the toilet "This is a grubby old flat". We congratulated him!

Oh gally it sounds fascinating I would be lost forever with all memorabilia and you would never see mr g for a while if he was let loose amongest all those cars and tractors.

Monsieur Nezereau's gite in SW France in 1986. He was a single gentleman of about 65 who let out the major part of his house. It had obviously not been cleaned for a quarter of a century (possibly when when his parents died) and nothing matched. The teapot had no lid, there were just about enough plates and cups for the 5 of us; cooking was done on a 1 plate 'hob', the bathroom was under the stairs which involved crouching so as not to hit your head on the stair above. Upstairs, our bed was a saggy mattress threequarter 4-poster with curtains and material which went right over the top of the bed. There was enough dust on top to fill at least 7 Hoover bags. DD1 pulled the curtains in her room which were about a 10' drop and they, plus the rail, fell to the floor. The late Mr Gally acquired some rawl plugs (try asking for rawl plugs in French ) and to reach the rail dragged a table to the window and then stood on a chair perched on 2 large encyclopaedias to fix them. We later read in the Visitors Book " this house is not called La Maison sans Rideaux for nothing" - it had obviously happened before.
Having said all that, I think it was one of the best holidays we ever had - quite wild, the sun shone every day and M. Nezereau taught DD3 aged 4 to ride a bike taken from his 'Musee' which was a barn full of the most amazing clutter/collection. Tin helmets from various wars, military memorabilia, bidets by the dozen, ladies hats from the C18/19 , bicycles, prams, top hats, berets, musical instruments, most of which were hanging from the beams, half a dozen ancient tractors and a couple of old citroen cars and everything was covered in cobwebs, reminiscent of Miss Havisham. Ah, those were the days. About 5 years later we were in the same area so called in to see Mr.N. and he proudly presented his new wife - a dumpy lady with a big smile - they looked just like the couple on the old weather house my Granny had, who used to go in and out according to the temperature! No doubt they are both pushing up the daisies now

We had a week in a holiday cottage in Ludlow (beautiful town, wonderful countryside, can't fault it) last year. Rented through an agency, it was in a perfect location down a little side passage, but one of those places that, the minute you open the door, your heart sinks. Obviously left to the owners by the deceased elderly relative, it didn't look as if it had been altered since that day. Very cramped, the ground floor was smaller than our kitchen but crammed with old heavy furniture. The kitchen was unsafe, cooker side by side with the ancient sink, cupboards full of bits and bobs of old chipped china. Worst still, the bedroom on the first floor had an old bed with a very old Dunlopillo mattress; the first night we used it, we both rolled into the middle, so after this we slept in separate bedrooms - how romantic! The shower room was cramped, old and dirty and the loo located at the top of a narrow flight of stairs - you sat on the toilet and pulled the double doors towards you.
To cap it all, there was no signal on the ancient television, and the next door neighbour was a music teacher, so any time spent in the cottage was accompanied by tuneless, repetitive piano music.
We did complain to the agency, but there was no feedback and I see it is still being advertised on their website. Wasn't a bargan, either! Luckily we loved the town of Ludlow and the beautiful area around it, so were able to get out and have a good time away from that horrible cottage.

Years ago we took the family to a cottage in mid-Wales - it was grim and we dodged the insects (I did not investigate!) skittering across the floor on the dark.

Then we took all the family and lots of other teenage hangers-on to another cottage on the Welsh coast - the beds were so disgusting that even the teenagers would not sleep in them but chose the floor! We decamped to a couple of caravans that we managed to find free on a nearby site. The person who had rented us this cottage is a local here and I still cannot look her in the eye! She advertised in the local parish mag - I truly do not know how she had the nerve. It was all a bit traumatic, as I was recovering from a hysterectomy at the time.

And another time when OH and I were first married we rented a caravan in the country which was unbelievably damp with mould dripping off the walls and in teh bed/mattress. We left early, and I vividly remember that we debated long and hard what to do with the contents of the bucket toilet and decided (naughty us!) to fling it over the nearest hedge on the grounds that the cows were crapping merrily there and no-one would ever know.....or would they? .....we had not banked on the bits of bright blue toilet paper that decorated the hedge after we had done the deed!

We used Youth Hostels in the UK all the time when our children were young. Brilliant. I made our own sheet sleeping bags out of cotton sheets. There were always nice people around and the kids always had someone to play with. Our favourites were Huntstanton, Hartington and Boggle Hole.

No I did not Bags and I was not warned where we would be staying either!

A damp gite in St Jean de Luz. I remember thinking at the time, I've had enough of French holiday homes having gone to France for about four successive years when the children were young we made the decision to go to America the following year and stay in some friends really nice apartment. I also remember being very annoyed when renting a holiday cottage in Devon where the owners had left all their food in the cupboards and to make matters worse left a note asking us not to touch any of it. If you are renting out your holiday home to friends and family at a knock down rent then fine, but they weren't we were paying top wack through an agent and in my opinion they should have cleared their cupboards. To make matters worse the house hadn't been cleaned properly.

Didn't you go youth hostelling when you were young, jess? One always had to take a sheet sleeping bag, which objects had integral pillow pockets.

Sheets, pillowcases, and duvets with fresh covers now provided at most YH.

Ah. Those were the days!

you weren't allowed to arrive by car either. How things have changed!

Saunton Sands Hotel - the worst stay of our lives, the worst service and the worst management.

I think that's the worst one yet, goldengirl!

A hotel in Moscow many years ago. When I pulled the curtains they fell off into my hands as the paper clips holding them up flew through the air. The wash basin didn't have a plug and the one provided on the key ring didn't fit. I pulled the plug of my hair dryer out of the socket on the wall and the socket was so fed up with the wall it wanted to come back with us. The food was cold and fatty. The outside looked like Colditz and the courtyard was overgrown. Why did we stay? It was a conference hotel and DH was a guest speaker!!! That said all the guests were taken out to the ballet but the coach left without us - and DH, as I say, was the 'celebrity' for the occasion!!! - and so we had to find our own way back to this place which was in the suburbs and only I knew a few words of Russian - hallo, goodbye, please, thank you, left and right. Luckily we remembered the Intourist hotel we'd stayed in some years before and thankfully it was where we'd left it. DH had fortuitously written down the name of our hotel and the Receptionist popped us into a taxi. The driver didn't speak English and it got really scary when we were taken down unlit country roads but to his credit he got us back. An absolute nightmare.

Did I say Fiancee? Meant fiance!

The Clifton Hotel in Folkestone (it's been refurbished now) in the 70s. My fiancee and I booked in for a fortnight because they claimed to be luxurious, had a lift, sea-view rooms, and the chef produced nouvelle cuisine food.

As we approached the hotel, we noticed that the glass panelled front entrance had about 10 broken panes of glass, reception turned out to be non-existent, we got stuck in the ancient lift, and the leg fell off the bed when we put the suitcases on it. The shower didn't work, there was no hot water, and the sea view was hidden behind the boarded up bedroom window!

Undeterred, we went down to dinner in the almost empty dining room. I ordered my nouvelle cuisine main meal, sardine provencale (having just been in Cannes, I fancied renewing my enjoyment of those lovely sardines cooked fresh on the terrace overlooking the Med). One tomato-coloured sardine out of a little tin arrived, resting on one small leaf from a little gem!

We walked back upstairs, packed our bags and rooted out the manager who was hiding in an office behind the empty reception desk. We told him to stick his hotel where the sun don't shine and drove to Winchelsea, where we stayed in the fabulous village pub and gorged ourselves on rib of beef and a full Sunday roast the next day. I shudder at the thought of nouvelle cuisine now - it always takes me back!

Mmm- so hard to choose but I think it was a youth hostel in the Lake District. DH (but not H then - in the first flush as it were) had staff working up there and suggested a weekend, and a check on the staff. Left S Wales after work, long drive and eventually located our destination sometime after 9pm. I had fondly imagined he had booked a basic double room for us. Mais non! There were 2 dormitories. Him in one with the chaps and me in the other with an unknown female, in bunks. Damp mattresses, musty pillows and scratchy blankets (presumably you were expected to bring luxuries like sheets and pillowcases.) Most of the team were asleep as they had to catch an early tide to do an oceanographic survey. So i had to creep into this toxic bunk, without waking up unknown female. Who of course got up to go surveying in the small hours, just as I had managed to get off to sleep.
The second night, dear reader, I booked us into a nice b and b.

Oh, and I was four months pregnant - this was in 1972 - and was plagued by heartburn.

A small cottage in Torridon with a 16 month old toddler, charming but an awful traveller (still is). Cottage leaked; no decent facilities for washing selves, child or nappies - this was in the days before disposable nappies except for the ones on a roll that gave him nappy rash. Weather was wet and predictably there were midges in clouds. We lasted about a week and then retreated to sister's house in Dundee. Never had I been so glad of hot running water.

The Museum Hotel in Margate! Sounded quaint but it was just a mess! All kinds of collections piled all over the place..some were quite interesting but amongst the tat hard to see! the bedroom had a four poster but the bed sheets etc were all a but retro: nylon sheets and flouncy bed cover!

When DD was about 10 I booked a special offer cheap holiday at Pontins in Southport - as a then single parent it was all I could afford.
Well, the mattresses of the beds were covered in hard, crackly plastic, the fridge didn't work, the inside of the kettle was furry with limescale, and our chalet was next-door to a couple of girls who seemed to have come just to pick up men and party! The mini-tv just ate up 50ps and I spent the week in a sleep-deprived haze - fortunately DD loved the funfair and especially the swimming pool, but I would never go there again. I know you can't expect luxury for a cut-price holiday, but there are limits!

Two holidays - both in hired caravans! One was at Strontian, when we opened the caravan door and a chicken walked out, having left it's calling cards before it left. However, the owners did leave us a nice plate of jam tarts (uncovered) as a welcome. The other was on Islay where we were shown into the caravan by the proud owner, who said the sink blocked up every day, but produced a NEW plunger for us to use. The cushion covers were one big hole (each one) with a frill round the edges. On the second-last night it poured with rain, and the roof leaked over our bed.......so next morning I trudged over to the farmhouse to tell them. I came back with a bag of home-made scones, but no promise to mend the roof. It rained again the next night, so we slept on the benches in the living-room part of the caravan!