Moy House is different: it looks not landwards but out to sea, to the mercurial Atlantic whose raging grey tempests and deliriously pink sunsets can hold you, recharging your soul, for hours. There’s a sandy beach at the bottom of the garden and the awesome Cliffs of Moher rise from the sea in the distance. Built on 9,000 acres in the 1820s as a summer house for Augustine Fitzgerald, Moy now stands on just 15 well-kept acres that include an ever-developing organic herb garden and orchard. The incomparable O’Looney family, funny, intelligent, imaginative, have restored it into unintimidating formal splendour. In clear good taste, the feel is friendly and welcoming: exquisite antiques, original art, sumptuous bedrooms, help-yourself coffee and homemade cake on the worktop. A glass-panelled floor in one of the stunning bathrooms looks down into the old well; a spiral wooden staircase leads up the tower for surfers to check the swell at the summit. Dinner is superb and you will retire to find chocolates and slippers waiting for you: the lovely staff see to that. Wonderful, worth every cent.
