About Bavarian Forest Holidays

Bavarian Forest Holidays was set up in 2005 by Margaret Leach and Martin Holborow to market our holiday apartments in Bayerish Eisenstein, in the Bavarian Forest.

We bought Haus Sterr in Autumn 2004 and started by renovating Haus Sterr 1, the 1st floor apartment, which we let from May 2005. Haus Sterr 2, on the ground floor, was available for letting from August 2005. The final apartment in the original building, the top floor, involved putting in a completely new apartment and was ready for Christmas 2005.

Holidays in our apartments were so popular that we started looking for another house in 2006 and managed to buy the house immediately behind Haus Sterr at auction in August 2006. The 'new' house has been totally renovated and 2 more apartments were available from Christmas 2006.

All of the apartments have completely new bathrooms and kitchens, new carpets and curtains and mainly new furniture, although we have kept some of the furniture made by the original owner of Haus Sterr, Anton Sterr. We have also kept the original decoration on the staircase of Haus Sterr, including the wallpaintings with alpine scenes and the stuffed birds and animals which represent a small museum of forest life in the mid 20th century when the house was built.

Fairly early on, we decided we liked it here so much we would live here full time!

Our principle thoughts

Our principle thoughts in preparing the apartments for letting were to provide the maximum (added) value:

That renting a holiday apartment should involve as little compromise as possible.
There is no reason to accept lower standards in holiday accommodation than you would expect at home.

We have had many experiences of walking through the door of holiday accommodation to find it grubby, with a mish-mash of furnishings, often uncomfortable and not enough for the number of people, a mess of old items in the kitchen, with breakages having been replaced by anything which came to hand and with no thought given to what is actually needed.

Our apartments are totally cleaned before the arrival of guests. Bedding, curtains, floorcoverings and furniture have been chosen to suit each other in each room. The kitchen cupboards and drawers contain all new, specially bought items - no second items from other houses - and are all of the best quality we could reasonably afford. Each kitchen has a 4 ring glass hob and full oven, a full size fridge, a microwave, a kettle (unusual in continental European holiday apartments), toaster, filter coffee machine, coffee grinder and all the pots, dishes and utensils you need to prepare, cook and serve a full meal, if you want to do that. The sitting room contains a full size TV (not the small screen so often found in holiday apartments) and a DVD player. Each apartment has at least one hairdryer. We are aiming for quality equivalent to a reasonable 4 star hotel.

Our apartments are not 'German' style and size
Our apartments are very much larger than standard German holiday apartments. They also do not have the combined kitchen/dining room/living room (sometimes even including a sofa bed) which you find in most German holiday apartments. Our apartments have bedrooms for sleeping in and a separate living room and kitchen/dining room. The 3 bedroom apartments all have a central corridor so that you don't have to go through one room to get to another. The 3 bedrooms in the newest apartments all have ensuite shower rooms. And every apartment has its own front door.

You should arrive with the appartment fully ready
You should be able to arrive at your apartment and concentrate on settling in and exploring the area, not have to immediately find a shop to get basic supplies. In your apartment you should find everything you need for your 1st breakfast, which extra supplies available if needed. If you arrive late on the 1st day or get back late from a trip out, there are pizzas and ready made meals in the freezer and a wide selection of soft drinks, beers and wines. If you need anything else, we can probably find it on our own stocks.

Everything for your holiday
During your stay, you should have almost everything you need for the type of holiday you want - whether relaxing, active, cultural or whatever. We provide a large file of detailed information about things to do in the area - historical, cultural, sporting, walks, eating out and shopping, public transport, driving. Just in case, you have any extra questions, we are normally resident at the house and available for any extra advice you may need. We keep out of your way if you want to do everything yourselves but are here to provide support, a chat or a drink if wanted. In summer 2006, we have accompanied guests to the local hospital, arranged tickets for a local festival, advised on driving and trains, collected guests from stations, taken guests on trips to the Czech Republic, had drinks on the terrace at the end of day to share experiences of days out, helped out with changing money and bus/train tickets, found more efficient train connections, given guests a lift to the Arber cable car and even retrieved some guests from further afield when they got stranded. And hardly seen some guests at all.

We provide tennis racquets, badminton racquets, a football and frisbee, toboggans for the winter, golf clubs, outdoor table tennis table and indoor table football. There is a sauna. For wet days and quiet evenings in, there are novels and guide books to read and DVDs and CDs to borrow.

Holidays should have as little impact on the environment as possible.
We ask guests to separate all their waste and place it in separate containers. We take most waste to the recycling centre, with only the minimum put in the black 'other waste' bins.

We have installed solar panels on both our houses.

We collect rain water to water the garden and flower pots/window boxes.

We use low energy light bulbs wherever possible and have water saving taps.

We encourage guests to drink tap water (which comes direct from local springs) rather than buying bottled water.

We encourage guests to use public transport by offering a free collection service from the local station and by selling train/bus tickets and offering advice on travelling by public transport.

As 50% of our guests are from the UK, we are now actively investigating to feasibility of making the whole journey from the UK by train. The first test journey (at our expense) will be made in October 2007. After that, we plan to promote this means of getting here, providing help with getting tickets at the best prices.

Since we started, we have branched out into 2 other areas:

Holiday lets for other people
Letting for other people, but only apartments which meet our size and quality standards. At the moment, this means only the apartments at Spiegelhuette, owned by our builder, which are studio apartments but very large and elegant.

Bringing buyers and sellers together
Helping to bring together buyers and sellers of property in the area, at the request of guests, readers of the article about us in the Times, and locals wanting to sell property.

Contact us

Bavarian Forest Holidays
Waldschmidtstrasse 1
94252 Bayerisch Eisenstein
Germany
Tel. (Germany) +49 (0)9925 90 32 04 (UK) 07976 403434
Email: pyrabelisk@btinternet.com