Ireland
Dublin is a charming city full
of Georgian townhouses, or at least that’s how it seems when you stay at the highly
acclaimed bed & breakfast Number 31 in the south of the city, less than 10
minutes walk from the city centre. A stroll along Leeson Street past colourful
doors with their signature brass knockers and decorative fanlights brings you
to St Stephen’s Green, one of the cities finest examples of Georgian squares
with a beautiful park in the centre full of spring colours and a lake with
swans and ducks.
Ireland take sits breakfasts seriously, and Number 31, a converted
Georgian terrace plus coach house through the pretty little courtyard, offers
what’s billed as Ireland’s best. It’s a hard call but they certainly come close
with a great selection of fresh and cooked fruits as well as hot dishes such as
cheese omelette, scrambled eggs with smoked Irish salmon and mushroom fritatta,
plus delicious house-baked cranberry and walnut bread along with the usual
cereals, yoghurts and so forth.
Head south through the misty moorland of the Wicklow Mountains where
evidence of peat cutting is obvious in the uneven landscape and the rivers and
waterfalls stained brown with peat look like they’re full of Guinness. The
Vales of Clara and Avoca are less haunting but more colourful with beautiful
spring blossoms and trees covered in moss … all the way to the top branches.
Drive on to County Wexford and the village of Inistiogh. Its been used as a
backdrop in several movies, but its brush with fame hasn’t spoilt this pretty
village which see sits share of visitors but still retains all of its charm.
Built on the Nore River it has a beautiful 10 arch stone bridge, lovely walking
paths along the river and some interesting ruins as well as a couple of pubs
and casual restaurants offering good home-style cooking (the Circle of Friends
café has amazing looking homemade desserts). The Woodstock Arms on the edge of
the small village square offers clean, comfortable and affordable B&B accommodation.
In the very south of the country are the counties of Cork and Kerry,
often mentioned as the most beautiful parts of this beautiful country.
Wonderful desolate high mountain passes and truly spectacular coastal scenery
combine with quaint villages, scattered medieval ruins and iron-age relics on
three peninsulas in this area. The Ring of Kerry is the largest and best known,
but the less-visited Beara Peninsula, which straddles Cork and Kerry, and
Kerry’s Dingle Peninsula are far more striking and more charming for escaping
the tour buses.
Beara, covered in wild desolate moorland, is haunting in its beauty and
the Seaview House Hotel in Ballylickey near the fishing village of Bantry, a
comfortable old country house with spacious rooms and lots of richly decorated
public rooms as well as charming little nooks and crannies, is a good base for
a day touring this rugged landscape. Evening meals in the comfortable dining
room offer generous portions of Irish produce, but breakfasts are again the
strongest suit, with a menu including boxty, traditional Irish potato cakes
(like the best ever hash-browns), sautéed kidneys, and plaice meuniere, and a
fruit salad of mixed berries with the reddest, ripest strawberries I’ve ever
tasted. For a taste of local seafood, head into the fishing town of Bantry to
O’Connor’s Seafood Restaurant on the main square where the native oysters are
so fresh they’re kept in a tank by the front door along with the live lobsters.
The blackboard menu changes with the day’s catch but is likely to include John
dory, brill, seabass, sole and monkfish.
http://www.oconnorseafood.com
Whereas Beara is haunting, Dingle is breathtaking, with sheer cliffs
plunging into an ocean dotted with off-shore islands and cliff tops embroidered
with a patchwork of fields in every shade of green enclosed in a maze of
ancient dry-stone walls. The best spot we found as a base for seeing this
beautiful area is Slea Head Farm, a B&B almost at the very tip of the
peninsula with just a few small comfortable but basic rooms and the most
spectacular views out over sheer cliffs to mist shrouded islands, while all around
are crumbling ruins of earlier farmhouses and that crazy maze of green fields
enclosed in irregular little dry stone walls. A great base for walkers, it’s
also close to the very well organised Blascaod Centre, which tells the story of
a hardy race of people who lived on the Blasket Islands just off the tip of
Dingle Peninsula up until the 1950s.
Slea HeadFarm: www.dunchaoin.com/e_feirm.htm
BlascaodCentre: www.heritageireland.ie/en/South-West/IonadandBhlascaoidMhoir-TheBlascaoidCentre
Northern Ireland
There’s so much more to see in the Republic of Ireland – we haven’t even
touched the west coast, beautiful Galway and Mayo, nor the remote and still
very Gaelic-speaking northwest around Donegal – but we’re tired from constant
travelling and so head to Northern Ireland for a few days R&R. Crossing
from the Republic into the UK region of Northern Ireland is seamless, there
isn’t even a border marker and we only realise we’ve made the transition when
we see traffic signs in miles rather than the familiar kilometres and pass a
‘Police’ station sign; the Republic’s police stations all being labelled with
the Gaelic word ‘Garda’. Interestingly this police station, which must be very
close to the border, is still surrounded in high barbed-wire fences, a reminder
of ‘the troubles’ that have been over now for scarcely 10 years. But apart from
this we see nothing to remind us of the recent troubled past; north and south
seem very harmoniously reconciled at long last.
Blessingbourne Estate on the outskirts of Fivemiletown in County Tyrone
is a traditional country estate set in pretty countryside. Nick and Colleen
Lowry run the estate as a beef cattle farm, but have also converted the old
stables area into comfortable self-catering apartments – the perfect spot for a
few days R&R. Apart from the cattle, the farm has a menagerie of peacocks,
goats, horses, llamas, cats, dogs and poultry (many roaming free) plus lakes
ideal for fishing and boating, woodland walking trails, a tennis court, and
bike hire for those who want to cycle down winding country lanes, plus a
wonderful old Victorian manor house in the throes of a major restoration. Of
course self-catering’s not essential and the Valley Hotel, 10 minutes walk (or
3 minutes drive) up the road, offers very respectable pub fare including
excellent steaks, fish’n’chips and better-than-average burgers. Within day trip
distance of Blessingbourne is Newgrange, an amazingly well-preserved 5,000 year
old passage tomb (possibly the oldest man-made structure on earth); the Giant’s
Causeway with huge hexagonal basalt columns so regular in formation that they
look manmade but are in fact one of nature’s more impressive formations; and
Northern Ireland’s capital city, Belfast.