Sometimes, the need to get away from it all means the need to get far, far away from it all, to head to the distant corners and the undiscovered places of the country. If there has been no time to make plans to escape for Easter, then these following houses should be immediately on your list for future trips away from the madding crowds. All of them offer the chance to disappear, to lose yourselves, blissfully.
Spinners Townhouse, Co Offaly
`At spinners we celebrate the landscape and visual inspiration of the Irish midlands," say Fiona and Joe Breen, and while this impressive collection of Georgian townhouses seems rightly and firmly rooted in Birr, the Breens have furthered their ambitions to create the right house in the right place by putting together a little design jewel.
"We wanted it to be a place that we ourselves would want to stay in," says Fiona Breen, and because her previous career in the rag trade has left her with an acute consciousness of style, you begin to get some idea of the modus operandi of Spinners. This glorious mixture of rooms, restaurant and courtyard have been decorated with ingenuity and intelligence. There is hardly a cliched note found anywhere, and the minimalism of the furnishings and decoration is so assured that it makes for a glamorous getaway.
That the house also boasts the Spinners Bistro, where Yannick Raul has charge of the stoves, makes it perfect for lazy, lingering time-out. By the way, don't miss the excellent sausages at breakfast, made by John Dwyer on Main Street in the town.
Fiona and Joe Breen, Castle Street, Birr, Co Offaly, tel: 0509 21673, email: spinners@indigo.ie, B&B from £17.50£20
Ardnamona, Co Donegal
Ardnamona is situated on the shores of Lough Eske, just a few miles outside Donegal town. However, I don't think here is another house which is just so awayfrom-it-all as Kieran and Amabel beautiful country house. Turn up here, and the rest of the world vanishes, simple as that.
Gardeners know Ardnamona on account of its famous collection of tree rhododendrons, and music lovers know it for the small, lovely theatre which Kieran Clarke has created and which hosts concerts occasionally. But folk who truly want to get away from it all know Ardnamona as a fine house which enjoys one of the most beautiful locations in the entire country. You can walk down the stairs in the morning, stroll to the front windows, and the perfection of nature arranged before you is simply too good to be true. The Blue Stack mountains cradle the waters of Lough Eske; too much of this, and you would be unfit for the workaday world.
The Clarkes form a perfect match with the house: genial, other-worldly, and decisively polite and non-commercial.
Kieran and Amabel Clarke, Lough Eske, Donegal, Co Donegal, tel: 073 22650, email: ardnamon@tempoweb.com, B&B from £40£47
Iskeroon, Co Kerry
Iskeroon is a marvellous house, a true design icon. Built by the Earl of Dunraven in the 1930s, it has a unique design, exceeded only by its astonishing location. Just past Caherdaniel on the ring of Kerry, going east, it is at the bottom of a steep hill. Descending this, you take all the left turns until you eventually drive across a small pebble beach, and there it is. But it is marvellously protected from the elements, and you can look out at the wild sea from the comfort of the house, snuggled up on the sofa with a glass in hand. You truly cannot get any further away from it all than at Iskeroon. It's not so much at the end of the earth, as on another planet. In some ways, in fact, the house feels like a work of art, its colours and contours so well expressed, its elemental location adding to the feeling that you are captured in the midst of something which someone is painting. Make sure, when booking, to also make a reservation at the nearby Stepping Stone restaurant, the hippest, smartest cooking in the area.
David and Geraldine Hare, Bunavalla, Caherdaniel, Co Kerry, tel: 066 9475119, email: iskeroon@iol.ie, B&B from £35
Butlerstown, Co Cork
Butlerstown is one of the most gorgeous Georgian houses you will find in Ireland. Built by Jonas Travers around 1805 to designs by an architect named Hutchinson, it is a house of fine proportions, and its staircase is one of the most impressive I have seen. The Georgians, with their eye for powerful simplicity, were minimalists centuries before Bauhaus, and Butlerstown is one of the most decisive essays in the art of simplicity you will find in Ireland.
The day rooms, with their grand fireplaces, are eternally cosy, and have a leanness which showcases and frames every detail to perfection. And the details could be pored over for hours: plasterwork with starfish, scallops and rope motifs, and a false window on the exterior.
If the house creates a marvellous feeling of well-being thanks to its aesthetic, the voluble hospitality of Elisabeth Jones and Roger Owen completes the picture.
Elisabeth Jones and Roger Owen, Butlerstown, Bandon, Co Cork, tel: 023 40137, B&B from £35£55.
Hilton Park, Co Monaghan
How to define sophisticated sloth? For me, it has to be a late-morning bath in the capacious tub in one of the Hilton Park bathrooms, looking down on the lake, all things in their element and with Johnny and Lucy Madden's fantastic breakfast bidding you down to the basement. Hilton is a definition of sophistication, a house so grand that you would reckon Charles Foster Kane had built it, and the Maddens have just the right sort of powerful personalities to match this imposing pile. Lucy Madden produces a great deal of the food for the table in her garden, and the cooking is as excellent as the style.
Johnny and Lucy Madden, Scotshouse, Co Monaghan, tel: 047 56007, hilton@indigo.ie, B&B from £57.50£67.50
Shelburne Lodge, Kenmare, Co Kerry
Kenmare is awash with wonderful places to eat and stay, and while Maura and Tom Foley's Packies restaurant is one of the great culinary totems of the town, their sublime country house, Shelburne Lodge, is also one of the great away-from-it-all places.
Mrs Foley Maura is as obsessive about design as she is about cooking, and she has radicalised the interior of this lovely Georgian house, creating a template for her implicit good taste. The entire aesthetic of Shelburne is so meticulously arrived at, and yet so uncontrived that it makes for a house which is exquisitely relaxing. Breakfasts, as you would expect, are bumper treats.
Tom and Maura Foley-O'Connell, Kenmare, Co Kerry, tel: 064 41013, B&B from £30£45.
Assolas Country House, Kanturk, Co Cork
Assolas is a country house where none of the clocks are wound. Its emphasis on stilling the passing of time extends to Hazel Bourke's magisterial cookery. "Time is the extravagant element in my cookery," she says, and she takes her time to get everything right. Firstly, First, the food is taken from the walled garden, and then in the little kitchen Hazel Bourke's ministrations transform her ingredients, slowly, surely, in the most confident, understated manner. There really is nowhere else quite like Assolas, and snuggled deep in the rolling countryside of north Cork is just where it belongs.
Joe and Hazel Bourke, Kanturk, Co Cork, tel: 029 50015, B&B from £55
Fortview, Goleen, Co Cork
Violet Connell's Fortview House sits hard by side of the road as you scoot down the Schull peninsula towards Goleen and Mizen Head, and it is one of the best loved B&Bs in the country. Perhaps it's the fabulous breakfasts which explain its appeal - homemade pancakes and maple syrup; hot potato cakes with creme fraiche and smoked salmon; a scramble of fresh eggs laid by the hens who scratch around outside; fruit juices; vegetable juices and lashings of coffee. Mrs Connell's smart eye for design throughout the house, and her true welcome, are also part of the spell, however, and here is a house which folk find difficult to leave.
Violet Connell, Goleen, west Cork, tel: 028 35324, B&B from £25
Tir na Fuise, Terryglass, Co Tipperary
Niall and Inez Heenan know how to do things right. They have recently restored some stone-built stables on their organic farm "in the vernacular style, using environmentally friendly products as much as possible", says Niall, and this thoughtfulness is truly typical of the couple's approach to hospitality.
The house and farm are just outside Terryglass, and this smashing, undiscovered area of Tipperary affords a brilliant chance to chill out in the midlands. And for those who are tormented by Guinness Extra Cold, do head to Kennedy's bar in Puckane, where you will find a pint properly pulled and poured at the right temperature.
Niall and Inez Heenan, Terryglass, Co Tipperary, tel 067 22041, nheenan@tinet.ie, B&B from £22.50
Newport House, Co Mayo
Newport is the quintessential country house. Palatial, magisterial, imposing, it speaks of another time when things moved slowly, with certainty, with a steady grace. "People say they feel they have been invited for a country weekend," Kieran Thompson said to me some years back, and the patrician elegance of the house means that one feels utterly removed from the workaday world within 10 minutes. The sumptuousness of John Gavan's cooking completes the picture of an indulgent oasis, memorable and unforgettable. Kieran and Thelma Thompson,
Newport, Co Mayo, tel 098 41222, email: KJT1@anu.ie, B&B from £60