Thanks again Ryan, all good and useful points, all of which we'll aim to fix (there's plenty more I could list but as with any software development it's all a case of prioritising what needs doing and working on the most important things first.... the site has come a long way in a short time).
So... agreed, it needs a 'cottages-lets' (Rentals, or whatever) tab to relate to that search. We know that, there's a reason why it hasn't arrived yet, but it will soon!
Secondly, I take your point about the URL structure, but the missing 'cottages-lets' bit aside, I think the structure makes sense. I think the country/county/town folder arrangement is logical.
Thirdly, I take your point about editing the URLs. I'll ensure that just having /England at the end (no county or town) returns the right results. We'll fix that too.
Fourthly, the footer links.... yes, see your point. I actually find them useful so I'm not 100% sure I want to remove them all, but certainly they could be reduced, and/or worded better... and the guides given as much prominence as the holiday let search.
Fifthly, the social icons. I'll have a think about this one. We do now have the floating bar at the side which achieves this aim.... the bottom ones were left because.... well, they look quite nice actually. Anyway, we'll review it!
...
Now, regarding your point about Panda and how it works... I have to say that that is not my understanding based upon a number of things I've read on the web about it, including quotes from Google employees (Matt Cutts I suspect). I imagine that Panda is a framework comprising changes made to the general Google crawling/indexing process and algorithms (ie. those things which happen 'daily') and also some algorithms and processing which is applied manually and periodically.
I believe (from what I've read) that the 'thin content' analysis (which may involve tools similar to CopyScape) is a time-consuming task so it is not run every day against websites, but is run manually. From what I've heard Google state, it is something they run every month or two. THEREFORE if it is that which has been applied to my site and a penalty applied (as I believe it has) then I won't escape the penalty until such time as that process is re-run against all the site's pages and the assessment of 'thin content' is reviewed. I believe the indexed pages now are rich enough to 'pass the test'.... but the penalty remains until the day when this process is run.
If I'm wrong about that I'm happy to be corrected, but it is certainly what I've heard and read. I'd have to dig out URL sources to prove it but you can probably find them if you search on Panda etc.