Reputedly Ireland’s longest running hotel under one family’s ownership: its ‘true country house’ atmosphere and easy access to rural pursuits draw back guests year after year. ‘We met a gentleman who first came half a century ago.’ The early Victorian manor house forgoes TVs, cutting-edge technology, slick bathrooms or even keys in its spacious, homely bedrooms, some with period furniture and shutters. Instead, there are books, big windows with ‘wonderful views’ of Lough Corrib, and ‘easy-going, warm hospitality’ from fifth-generation owners Henry and Lucy Hodgson. ‘The hotel is unapologetically what it is,’ says one regular visitor this year. ‘Reassuring, cosy, undemanding.’ Guests can fish with local ghillies, walk through acres of parkland, or choose from six nearby golf courses. Indoors, unfussy country house dinners, cooked by Prue Leith-trained Lucy Hodgson, reliably deliver main courses of ‘lamb, beef, venison, hake or cod, plated in a modest quantity, with seconds offered – a perfect compromise’. After dessert, there are Irish cheeses; ‘a very happy formula’. As for the breakfasts, ‘the Irish formula is always available, but so is scrambled egg and smoked salmon’. (Richard Parish, PH)