Gregans Castle Hotel

Sitting in an enchanted corner of County Clare, overlooking Galway Bay and surrounded by the extraordinary limestone landscapes of the Burren with their unique botanical and archaeological treasures, award-winning Gregans Castle is one of the West of Ireland’s most charismatic small luxury hotels. Dating back to the mid-eighteenth century, Gregans Castle is really more country house than castle, and offers a warm and personal ambience, understated opulence and some of Ireland’s most delicious and inventive cuisine.

Each of the 21 bedrooms and suites has been personally decorated in an invitingly homely country chic style peppered with objets d’art and antiques gathered from a life of travel by husband-and-wife owners Simon Haden and Frederieke McMurray. Along with creature comforts come little touches such as REN toiletries, reading material a-plenty and complimentary WiFi and mineral water, but TV addicts might be best advised to ask for alternative accommodation, as Gregans Castle is resolutely television-free. Some of the rooms have their own private garden area and all have spectacular views of the garden, Galway Bay or the mountains of Connemara.

In an environment as warm and intimate as Gregans, it is perhaps a little surprising to find a cutting-edge restaurant, but have no doubt that meals are an absolute highlight of a stay at Gregans Castle, and head chef David Hurley serves up outstanding contemporary dishes featuring the superlative local ingredients from organic Burren lamb and wild game to halibut and oysters fresh from the Atlantic Ocean. Afterwards you can relax with a dram of Irish whiskey in front of the peat fire in the amiably higgledy-piggledy Corkscrew Bar.

The Burren and adjacent Cliffs of Moher comprise one of Ireland’s truly magical landscapes, and it’s an absolute must to head out with your private guide, preferably on foot, to explore the wealth of ancient sites from prehistoric dolmens and sacred wells to country churches sporting sheela-na-gig fertility carvings. In May and June, you can hardly walk without treading on orchids and other rare wildflowers that have colonised the limestone clints and grikes of the Burren, while the Cliffs of Moher – especially spectacular towards sunset – offer wheeling gulls and skittering puffins and guillemots. Stay an extra day, and you can also sail across to the mystical Aran Islands, and then you are in heaven.