I am not in the habit of plugging the places I stay, but I like to think I'll never again fly in or out of Dublin Airport in summer without spending a few nights at Hounslow House. Mrs. Healy serves tea with rich, thick, homemade scones, and cooks up the best Irish breakfast of all of the B & B's I stayed in. Best of all, she slows down, pulls up a chair and asks you where you've been, where you're going and how you came to find her rambling Irish farmhouse. Her tables overflow with stacks of books about the area, and maps and brochures and magazine articles, alongside a signed copy of a book of poems by Fore's own poet, Michael Walsh, known as the bard of Fore. Mention the 7 Wonders and watch her face light up.
Mrs. Healy's home is a working farm, and you're sure to run into Mr. Healy and the farm hands taking lunch in the kitchen or cruising by in a tractor. The horses are just the other side of where you parked your car, behind that screen of trees, and the sheep, well, they graze just across the road from the house, out your bedroom window if you get the room I did. Best of all, Hounslow House is surrounded by monuments - crumbling ruins, Bronze Age burial sites, manor houses, castles and ancient celtic crosses.
So,that's my shameless plug and I'm sticking with it. I'll hope to run into you round Mrs. Healy's breakfast table sometime.