GO IRELAND:Some of Ireland's best hotels are tempting whole families to come visit with a range of activities from clay pigeon shooting to quad biking. BERNICE HARRISONtook her gang to Mount Juliet in Co Kilkenny while LIAM STEBBINGtried out an action package in Sheen Falls in Co Kerry
MOUNT JULIET:THE PLAN for the long weekend in Mount Juliet involved plenty of excursions – to Kilkenny city for dinner, Jerpoint Abbey for a bit of history, a little walk around Thomastown. The more we looked at what was on offer in the vicinity, the longer the list grew.
And then we drove through the swanky gates of the estate and forgot all those plans. As it turned out, we didn’t venture back along that sweeping driveway until it was time to go home. We were simply far too busy. What with the horse riding, clay-pigeon shooting, going for spins on bikes and pottering around in the leisure centre, we didn’t even think about getting back in the car.
That’s the thing about going to a “resort”. As travel terms go, it has to be one of the broadest, most misunderstood descriptions. You hear people talking of Spanish “resorts” when what they mean is an apartment block with a swimming pool and a coffee bar. And then there are seriously upmarket places such as Mount Juliet, which came in at number 12 in Conde Nast Traveller’s Top 25 European Resorts, as voted by the magazine’s readers.
As a real resort, the Kilkenny estate has everything a holidaymaker could possibly need, from a choice of three restaurants and a spa to an exhaustive list of activities – and that’s not even counting the famous golf course.
Like most upscale European resorts, Mount Juliet is targeting the family market – hence our visit – and the June weekend we visited there were signs that their Family Stay packages are working. As well as a couple of Irish families, there was a Canadian family stopping off on a European trip, a multi-generational American family and a German couple with their teenage boy.
A resort is a smart option for parents of only children because of all the activities they can wander off and do on their own.
Nearly everything that’s available for adults is there in a junior version for children, with golf clinics, horse-riding lessons, archery classes and fishing lessons. The timetable in the leisure club gives children plenty of time in the pool while blocking off adult-only sessions.
We went on a guided family riding trek. There are 16 miles of bridle paths winding their way through the magnificent tranquil grounds and our hour-long trek took us along the Nore and through leafy forests. All skill levels within our little group were catered for, from my nerves at the very idea of even sitting on a horse to dad’s practised ease – and it gave the children an idea of what horse riding is all about.
In everything we tried there was the comforting feeling that the instructors were experienced full-time professionals – Shane, the clay-pigeon shooting instructor was particularly patient in teaching something that looks easy but is, in fact, a bit tricky.
If you were staying for a week with a couple of pre-teens, the day-long children’s club (its called Little Rascals, so good luck in persuading older children to join up) looks a good option, especially for golf-loving parents who would then get a chance to play the course. However, as with all activities except the use of the leisure club, the bicycles and the games room, it costs extra.
One activity we would have loved to try had we been staying longer was the Tuesday canoeing session. You’re brought by car to Bennetsbridge and then paddle back to Mount Juliet on the River Nore. It sounds idyllic.
OF COURSE, your visit doesn't have to be action-packed. Wandering through the beautiful rose garden is a treat; a personal favourite is the old-fashioned walled garden, planted with herbs, vegetables and flowers. There are several gentle walking trials mapped out, the nicest taking you along the River Nore and up around Ballylinch Stud. A plan for a game of croquet on the lawn in front of the main house was abandoned in favour of sitting in the sun.
The Family Stay packages are self-catering, with guests staying in the Rose Garden Lodges. While the package includes a 10 per cent discount in the restaurants and bar, most families would stock up on the basics before arriving rather than eating every meal in the on-site restaurants. Full marks, though, for the children’s menu which is the same in all the estate’s restaurants. It was a nugget-free zone and included a chicken wrap and salad, smoothies and – the real winner – a dessert of home-made chocolate chip cookies, served with a glass of milk.
- Bernice Harrison was a guest of Mount Juliet. The Family Stay packages cost from €1,400 for seven nights for a family of four based on self- catering in the Rose Garden Lodges
- Mountjuliet.ie
SHEEN FALLS LODGE:SOME OF US – mainly the girls – are born to ride horses. And some of us – mainly the men – are born to ride quad bikes. Which is why I'm facing off against Desmond, a lean Irish-American who's in Co Kerry on a visit to the old country, on a 650cc Honda Rincon.
It’s a time trial around a short but tricky course that requires plenty of muscle to swing the bike around turns and through chicanes, plus, at one point, to ride the two right-hand wheels up and along a plank raised perilously high, tilting one side of the Honda off the ground. Neither of us has ridden a quad bike before, so it’s all to play for, man to man.
Desmond does well, impressing our instructor by completing the circuit in 90 seconds. But I do even better, making the most of a fast start to whizz through the chicanes, then taking the plank in my stride. Fifty-one seconds. I’ve made mincemeat of Desmond. Who cares that he’s 14 and that I’m 38? And let’s not dwell on the fact that the plank is, er, only about 15cm off the ground, or that I’ve earned so many time penalties for hitting obstacles that, once they’re added to my score, my lead over Desmond is shaved back almost to nothing. This is my moment of glory, and I’m going to bask in its glow.
It also means my daughters get to see me triumph in the sporting arena. This is cool, given that earlier the four of us trekked out above the River Blackwater, just outside Kenmare, on horses that had been selected from a stable of a dozen or so to give us adults a particularly easy ride, as we barely know one end of the animal from the other. This meant that our children, who are well up to cantering around a horse-riding arena, had to keep their ponies at a walking pace.
The quad-biking triumph has redressed the balance a little during the family activity day that Sheen Falls Lodge, the five-star hotel just off the Ring of Kerry, has organised for us. It’s a day that’s all about bonding and has shown that each of us has skills the rest of our family might not have known about.
On mature reflection, it might not be a good idea to make too much of the quads-versus-horses gender-divide thing. Aren’t men meant to be born to read maps?
It turns out that it’s one thing to be handy with a road atlas and quite another to get to grips with a grainy aerial photograph of the Eclipse Centre, which runs the hotel’s activity days. Its stables and self-catering houses take up just a corner of the estate, leaving us with almost 40 hectares of meadows, paddocks, copses and hillside fields to get lost in. Our job now is to follow a series of clues around the estate, using the photograph, a compass and, with luck, our sense of direction to work our way around the course, which is defined by a series of markers.
Some aren’t as easy to find as we had imagined, particularly as our imaginations didn’t stretch to us having to climb through fences, hurdle streams and negotiate bog holes. It’s only when Athos, the centre’s owner, comes out to find us, once we’ve missed our lunchtime deadline, that we begin to appreciate the finer points of orienteering. He leads us through the process of working out what the last few clues mean and how we’re to track down the final markers.
Still, our bouts of bickering about which direction to head in for clues seem to have purged us of any lingering city stress, and even helped us to work as a team.
When we come to the day’s final activity, we find that we have knitted together nicely and are well able for the challenge. It doesn’t seem too demanding to begin with: Athos has laid out a mini-obstacle course in the middle of a field. Our job is to get from one end to the other – but we can only get there as a team.
ONE OF THEfour tasks is to make it across an imaginary stream by laying down tiny stepping stones in front of us as we progress. We have only four of them, which leaves just three for the four of us to balance on as we move the last stone from behind to in front of us, to enable us to keep moving forward. It's our nine-year-old daughter who comes up with this technique, so we parents realise it's time to take a back seat and do as the kids tell us.
Although it seemed an unlikely possibility this morning – we leave Sheen Falls under a blanket of cloud that doesn’t take long to start raining on us – the sun has been beating down all afternoon, so we get back to the hotel with a mixture of mud-streaked clothing and sun-pinkened faces.
We feel not a little out of place in the hotel’s elegant lobby, so it’s straight upstairs to our spacious room, overlooking the picturesque series of falls that give the hotel its name, to change for dinner.
We ate at La Cascade, Sheen Falls’s formal restaurant. It was a fabulous meal, from the surprisingly subtle turnip soup to the tasty plate of home-smoked salmon and the perfectly cooked black sole. These were accompanied by a bottle of wine recommended by the sommelier, who kept us at the less expensive end of the hotel’s long wine list. Nevertheless, the bill for the four of us came to about €200, plus €30 for pre-dinner drinks.
A lot of the waiters we talk to are hotel-management students from around Europe, here on six-month placements. So although there’s the odd moment when it’s clear they’re still perfecting their skills – taking a black sole off the bone at the table is not easy task, to be fair – they are so friendly and charming that we come away feeling that Sheen Falls Lodge has by far the nicest service we’ve encountered anywhere, including at some of Dublin’s best-known hotels.
But they’re not going to tempt me to try the desserts. Let the children weigh themselves down with brownies and ice cream: I might have another race to win tomorrow.
- Liam Stebbing and family were guests of Sheen Falls Lodge (064-6641600, sheenfallslodge.ie). A three-night Family Fun at the Falls package, which includes accommodation in a luxury room for two adults and up to two children, Irish breakfast, transfers and full-day access to the kids' camp at the Eclipse Centre, costs €960. A five-night package costs €1,370. Available Monday-Friday (weekends on request) until the end of August.