DUBLIN HOSPITALITY is an essential ingredient of any holiday abroad. If the traveller doesn’t feel welcome, he doesn’t enjoy himself. It’s as simple as that. But hospitality is an elusive quality. In expensive hotels, where money is all, it can quickly degenerate into an ingratiating subservience. The truest form of hospitality is spontaneous, and nowhere is the true art more on display than in that time-honored part of the Irish holiday scene – the bed and breakfast.
Popularly known as the B and B, it is hardly exclusive to Ireland. (In Germany, for instance, it is called Zimmerfrei.) But it’s fair to say that the Irish have made the B and B their own. What it amounts to is an entree into domestic Irish life – cosy, friendly, relaxing (especially in rural areas). By no means least, it’s cheap, usually about $US8.50 a night.
An American couple, who had spent several weeks staying in hotels in Europe including Ireland, told me in a bed and breakfast near Limerick: You know, we’re loving this. (It was said with a sense of surprise.) This is a lot more fun than hotels. As we talked, the children of the house bustled around making them cups of tea while in the nursery two other children had adopted the impromptu role of baby-sitters and were entertaining free of charge the couple’s two-year-old daughter.
When the couple came to settle the bill, they received a pleasant surprise. Two days and two nights, including mountainous breakfasts, came to $38. Their daughter was half-price.
As they left, they pointed out that the total charge was precisely $28 less than what they had just paid for one night, plus breakfast, in a well-known hotel in Galway City.
Although B and Bs differ throughout Ireland in much the same way that homes differ, they all have a few important things in common. Prices are similar, ranging between $6.50 and $9.50. Breakfast is invariably an Irish fry – copious helpings of justly famous pork sausages, eggs, bacon, toast.
Furnishings are usually comfortable rather than plush. Everything is clean. And the bathroom is down the hall (although most rooms contain wash basins). There aren’t many frills but it’s all a traveller needs.
Uncannily, a B and B is invariably available when you need it most, perhaps after a day’s motoring. Although hotels inevitably tend to cluster around main centres or recognised tourist spots, a B and B is just as likely to turn up off the beaten track. A tourist is never far from a B and B.
It’s also astonishing how often the proprietor is a bustling motherly lady who, her family having grown up, has taken on the B and B to provide an interest rather than an income.
Nothing is ever too much trouble for her. If her guests arrive back in mid-morning, thirsty and hungry, after a brisk country walk and want a cup of tea and sandwiches, it’s as good as done. The tea comes in the domestic pottery and the sandwiches groan with thick slices of local ham or with salad culled from the back garden.
Almost all bed and breakfasts are small, hardly ever more than six guest rooms and usually around three or four. The result is a sense of hearth-like intimacy as family and guests group around a blazing log fire at nights, sipping tea or something stronger and chatting about life in general.
It’s not the Ritz but it is authentic Irish home life.
Although the local Tourist Board (Bord Failte) inspects the bed and breakfasts which it approves, it is possible to strike an indifferent one. The welcome is always there but sometimes the ambience is, well, more basic than comfortable.
In one B and B in the mid-West the man of the family had built the house which consequently revealed not a few deficiencies. All the doors squeaked; if anybody went to the bathroom at night, the whole house woke up and knew. The design of the staircase had turned it into a perfect echo-chamber, with the result that the footfalls of a late-night reveller boomed around the building like distant thunder. And the lavatory either didn’t flush, or flushed with Niagara-like noise.
But most bed and breakfasts are in spirit like Anne Flannery’s Otway Lodge at Dromineer, a peaceful backwater of the River Shannon. Popularly known as the Post Office B and B because the Flannerys also handle the mail from a general store adjoining Otway Lodge, the enterprise is very much a family affair. The Flannerys have six daughters.
The atmosphere is easy-going. Breakfast-time is when it turns up, but usually around 9 a.m. The helpings are so plentiful as virtually to render lunch redundant. If you want a clean towel, help yourself from the drying-cupboard. The walls of the bedrooms are conspicuously free of those terse notices listing a variety of dont’s, or even the hour at which guests should vacate the room on the day of departure. (It’s around midday).
Like other B and Bs, there’s no lunch. However, some of them offer afternoon tea. Anne also cooks a superb dinner that usually presents a table d’hote five courses for around $9 a head. If guests want to go up to the Whisky Still pub a hundred yards away, it’s okay to leave the children in the care of one of her daughters for half an hour or so.
The Irish Tourist Board sells for 15p an excellent up-to-date guide, Irish Homes Accommodation, which lists all the town and country B and Bs and their phone numbers. It’s essential for travellers who plan to cover a lot of ground. Also detailed in the guide are rates, number of rooms, distance from a central town and such useful extra information as whether the B and B in question offers golf nearby, scenic walks, horse-riding, fishing, baby-minding facilities etc.
In peak season between June and August it’s advisable to phone ahead to make sure there’s a room.
