The luck of the Irish The rain doesn’t matter when the humour and charm of Ireland, and its wonderful places to stay, make up for it in bucketfuls, says Fiona Duncan
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keep going back to Ireland. Yes, it rains quite a bit, but the humour, from the moment I arrive till the moment I leave, is dry enough to make up for any amount of inclement weather, while delightful places to stay keep me entranced. Irish country-house hotels are like so many of England’s used to be before chains and brands got at them – privately owned for generations, slightly potty, unpretentious, comfortable and kind. They are almost always set in lovely Georgian country houses, the locally sourced food is invariably satisfying, and the diversions on offer are winningly quirky. I’ve been foraging and whale watching along a cliff top with a laconic ex-rocker; gone sea kayaking with a staggeringly good looking outdoor adventurer who I swear was Brad Pitt; and been dragged over the Burren’s limestone terraces in a gale by a madcap local naturalist. There’s a sense of acceptance among the Irish, born, they say, of the famine – nothing by comparison could be worse. They are resigned
to downturns: when the Celtic tiger stalled, they adjusted with resignation. It’s the same with the hoteliers, who tend to ride the waves of fortune better than their more tender English counterparts. Take Currarevagh House in Country Galway (see page 197), Ireland’s oldest guesthouse, where the Hodgson family has been riding the waves with phlegmatic wit for five generations in a house that was originally built for the family in the 17th century. Almost nothing has changed. On the 1848 silk wallpaper above the staircase hangs a huge, almost-as-old tiger skin. ‘A bit un-pc these days,’ I commented. ‘Certainly not,’ replied current incumbent Henry Hodgson, whose wife Lucy is the excellent cook, ‘it was shot in self-defence. We are not American dentists’. A gong heralds dinner. There are no TVs or even radios in the oldfashioned bedrooms with their ’70s bathrooms, and no room keys. ‘We don’t have them,’ says Henry. ‘Things have stayed the same here
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