WHAT are we food and travel writers looking for as we journey the country, year in, year out, putting in the leg work for annual guide books? Simple. Scene and not herd proprietorial confidence and individuality style spiffing cleanliness. And good grouting.
Good grief Good grouting? Well, yes.
It might be easy to explain my predilection for good grouting as a sign of increasing age, or perhaps ever developing bourgeoisification, but I think it rests largely with two factors. The first is the vast number of showers I have encountered over the years. These showers, found in homes which are both grand and simple, cheap and costly, are implements which I have christened "mirage showers".
These evil contraptions, jezebels of the glass eased cabinet, do not greet the sweat strewn traveller with a blast of blisteringly fresh water, restoring body and soul to squeaky clean happiness. Instead, they send forth a piddly rumble of lukewarm water, which escapes from the nozzle with all the force of a Jeffrey Archer narrative.
You enter the glass case with dreams of crashing water like a thirsty man crawling through a desert who suddenly glimpses a cool pool and a palm tree in the distance. Then tragedy. The water pressure is not only pathetic, but the temperature begins at "Scald", before quickly and inexplicably changing to "Freeze", where it remains until you switch the damn thing off. It has all been a mirage.
The second thing which is greviously offensive to the traveller is the Box in the Corner of the Bedroom. The Box exists because nowadays almost everyone demands an "en suite" room. So, how do you provide said "en suites"? Simple. Build a box in the corner, shove in the white stuff with the water, and hey ho "en suite".
The consequence is to destroy the ceiling line and make the room claustrophobic and the final insult is usually the fact that the job, having been done as quickly and cheaply as possible, will always be distinguished by seriously bad tiling. Manky grouting. Smotherings of adhesive snaking everywhere except where it should be.
And so you lie in the bath, and instead of thinking about dinner and the evening to come, you wind up thinking what a grotty bathroom you are in, and how you aren't enjoying your well deserved soak one bit. Hence the importance of grouting.
Well, if you are as fussy about grouting as me, and fearful of setting off for a short break in case you might encounter a mirage shower or a Box in the Corner, here are 10 great bathrooms and some accompanying bedrooms, where you can slumber happily after blissful ablutions.
1: Liss Ard Lake Lodge, Skibbereen, Co Cork
There are no other bathrooms like the bathrooms in Liss Ard. They combine the hi-tech functionalism you find in top flight hotels with a coolness and aestheticism which is totally compelling.
2: Echo Lodge, Ballingarry, Co Limerick
The attention to detail which is evident in every aspect of Dan Mullane's sumptuous house extends right down to using Hansgrohe showers, imported from Europe. If you feel the need to be pummelled with a torrent of water as if you are appearing in a shampoo advertisement, then Ballingarry is the place to be.
3: Isaac's Hostel, MacCurtain Street, Cork
Yes, yes, I know. Hostel bathrooms are generally subjects not fit to be raised at dinner parties. But, believe it or not, the bathrooms in the family rooms in Isaac's are excellent. Shower, sink and loo are organised so that when you have a shower you actually wash everything, with the water quickly scuttling away into a floor drain. Clever.
4: Waterman's Lodge, Ballina, Co Tipperary
Anne and Brid Ryan's house is a cool, chic space, showing a beautiful understanding of understatement. Classical colours and smart use of wood panelling give the lodge a nostalgic feel.
5: Hilton Park, Scotshouse, Co Monaghan
Johnny and Lucy Madden don't issue parachutes as you retire for the night in Hilton Park, but some of their beds are so princess and the pea colossal that just clambering into them makes you feel like a tour year old once again. Bathrooms also share the epic feel, in an epic house.
6: Ballyvolane House, Co Cork
You have to take steps up to the baths in the front rooms at Ballyvolane, so colossal and grand are they. They appear almost to have been transplanted from Victorian public bath houses, with their arcane plumbing, monumental scale and Heath Robinson eccentricity. In other rooms, Merrie and Jeremy Green have installed Victorian water closets.
7: Kilcullen's Seaweed Baths, Enniscrone, Co Sligo
A cracking public bath house, where sea water and fresh seaweeds are used in baths which are not only blissfully sensual but thumpingly therapeutic. The sensation of floating in a sea water bath, then popping into an old fashioned steam bath for a few minutes, creates a thirst for pints of porter like no other experience.
8: The Clarence Hotel, Dublin
If we were to take their music as Edge of U2 might approach design, we might reckon on some thing rather bombastic for The Clarence. All praise, then, to the restraint and tact evident in the plain white porcelain Clarence bathrooms.
9: Kille House, Clifden, Co Galway
Grouting to die for! The tiling in the bathrooms in Anya Vermoolen's house is so intricate, so expert, so goddamned perfect, that it gladdens the heart.
10: Scilly House Inn, Kinsale, Co Cork
If you tend to discount the importance of bathrooms in the context of travelling and holidaying, then book the harbour viewing bedroom in Seilly House, which enjoys an enormous circular bath. Settle yourself into it, and then lazily read the notes in the guest book written by the other guests who have stayed in the broom with the bumper bath. Phew!
