The Lake House - Watermark the Cotswolds

Wow, what can I say... From the moment I stepped throuhgh the front door to this stunning house I was left speechless. The interior is truly beautiful in every room, everywhere you look has mesmerizing detail. 

We arrived around 3pm on Wednesday after spending the day at Cotswold Wildlife Park and had clear arrival instructions from Watermark of how to get to the property and how to retrieve the key from the secure lock box. Firstly, we of course took millions of photos, we just couldn't help ourselves! Then we unpacked and had a good look around, this took us a while as the house is so big you can practically get lost in there. We started off with a game of hide and seek as it was the perfect location for it, my little boy was in his element with so many different rooms to hide in, Rosie did a great job of sniffing out the hiding places too. We took Rosie for a walk around the estate, it was lovely to see all of the other properties on the landings and checked out the tennis courts.

Next we prepared dinner, the open plan kitchen/diner was definitely one of my favourite rooms. If you love to cook and host dinner parties, this would be the perfect place! My Mum and I said several times how lovely it would be to have all of our family there over Christmas, with us all around the table. When you're not used to having a kitchen so big it can take a little while to find everything but we got there in the end. Embarrassingly it took 2 of us about 15 minutes to find a teaspoon at first. It has every appliance you could possibly think of indluding 2 ovens, 2 dish washers, and two fridge freezers, there's also a utility room too.

After dinner we settled my little boy into bed and welcomed in Zoe from Zen Pamper, Zen Pamper offer mobile spa treatments covering Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Bath and more. Watermark very kindly give you 10% off treatments during your stay which we booked in advance prior to our arrival. My Mum and I both decided to go for a 30 minute Swedish back, neck and shoulder massage which was really reasonably priced. Zoe was very professional and friendly and also really knowledgable about the products she was using, we felt very comfortable having her in the lodge. The massage was obviously very relaxing too! I personally slept like baby that evening and sunk into my four poster bed.

The next morning we woke up to typical British weather which messed up our plans a little, we had hoped to spend the entire day in the house and enjoy the lake and garden. However the winds were really strong and it wasn't safe to be launching the paddleboard into the lake. We changed our plans and went out to explore the nearby dog friendly towns and walks. When we returned to the house we managed to spend an hour in the garden where my little boy and Rosie had lots of fun running around playing together. The secure decking area was perfect for dogs to enjoy the outside space. After this we made dinner then decided to have cosy movie night in the cinema room. The cinema room is equipped with a huge wall mounted smart TV with Sky, Netflix, Disney+ & wireless speaker system.

Check out was 10am on the Friday morning, and I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to go out on the lake the day before, so I set my alarm to get up for the sunrise at 5.45am (crazy I know!) I launched my paddleboard and enjoyed a couple of hours on the lake and managed to get some lovely photos of the outside of the house and of course the sunrise. The lake was honestly so peaceful at that time, I'm so glad I did it, I stood up for the first time on the board and fell straight off which most certainly woke me up and set me up for the day.

The checkout process was just as simple as arriving, we packed and tidied everywhere up as much as possible before setting off. Then went into Chipping Norton and Stow on the wold for the day after leaving the house, which was lovely.

We couldn't fault our stay at all, it was exceptional, I would highly recommend it to everyone. The booking process was so smooth, we had everything we needed for a real home away from home holiday.