We rolled along the poplar lined gravel drive and pulled up outside the immaculate Wisteria covered Georgian façade of the Ballymaloe Country Hotel, County Cork. Simultaneously we looked into the back seat. Only two hours before our three year daughter had sat there pristine and interested. What remained was a squirming mass of restless Marmite and banana.

With heavy hearts we contemplated our latest choice of hotel. We were fresh but not at all rested from a two day stay in Tenby, South Wales. An idyllic fishing village with a long sheltered sandy beach to match the best on offer by any self-respecting Greek island. But “Tenby’s Finest Hotel” had been discreetly littered with small notices and an atmosphere stating “Children will only be tolerated if they are on their best behaviour”. A short sighted recipe for disaster.

Not so long ago we’d have joyously rocked up to hotels like Ballymaloe, swanned into the lounge, taken a window seat and ordered a couple of Bloody Marys before unpacking. A twitching mass of self-conscious dread was now sitting on the pleasant echo of this childless memory.

A friendly young porter appeared and didn’t look twice as he unloaded the bags stuffed with toys and nappies, or the picnic cooler full of the emergency organic milk, yoghurts and cheesy bread sticks or even at the not very fold-away cot.

“He seemed nice.”

“Only after a tip, don’t be fooled.”

We generously tipped him and tip-toed into the lobby… Baby hell – an overwhelming atmosphere of serene calm, comfy chairs, fishing rods, well chosen modern art. The receptionist sat behind the desk, tight bun, wiry, efficient seen it all before sort. She looked up.

“Aw, bless her, is she hungry? You’re just in time for the children’s tea. I’ll get them to send up another plate. Do you like fish sweetheart – it came out of the sea this morning.”

She did, and the tiny home-made chips that came too, all eaten off the gingham table cloth and washed down with freshly squeezed lemonade.

For the next two days we languished in the picturesque surroundings of an Irish Country House, ate some of the best food I have ever experienced in the exquisite dining room and didn’t once feel that the hotel was doing us a favour or that we were imposing our child on anyone.

There were other family groups in the hotel but even those without children didn’t seem to mind their presence. Passing a casual “Howy’a going?” Or a “Would you care for a bite?” when our child toddled into them in the lounge or poked her head over their table to see if their breakfast was more interesting than hers.

The hotel is owned and run by the Allen family. Darina Allen is the Irish Delia Smith and in charge of their magnificent kitchens. All the food is either grown in their own gardens, sourced from local organic farmers or straight out of the local sea. The evening set meal is a generous five courses, each surpassing the last. The waiting staff are local women who genuinely ask if you’d like seconds. They also offer a baby listening service at night, but our baby listener worked in the dining room perfectly.

There’s a swimming pool, tennis court, croquet lawn, pitch and put golf course and gardens with peacocks, hens and ducks to walk in. Loads of proper board games, children’s outside play area with big chairs near by. TV with good selection of appropriate videos. Lots of nooks and crannies, inside and out, to sit down in and drink unlimited cups of Irish tea and home made biscuits, which all seem to included in the basic B&B rate. And if you can tear yourself out of the secluded loveliness of the hotel, there’s plenty of nice seaside, pretty villages, potteries etc to explore. Oh and there’s a cookery school too at Ballymaloe. Residential if you like, courses of all lengths and standards.

You can get to Cork by plane direct from Heathrow and it’s about twenty minutes from the airport. If you’re more adventurous you can drive and get the ferry over from Holyhead to Dublin or Pembroke to Rosslare (A two-ish hour nice dive).

We spent the rest of our holiday staying in similar but not quite as nice hotels as Ballymaloe, which we found in Ireland’s Blue Book. This is a fantastic resource with 35 individual owner-managed country house hotels, most with acclaimed restaurants. We essentially picked them randomly and were never disappointed. In comparison we found the scary Tenby hotel in the unfathomable RAC guide.

At the end of our stay, we naturally didn’t want to go home but did want to know why the (more expensive) hotel in Wales couldn’t have been more like this. We vowed never to stay anywhere that wasn’t child sympathetic or, more importantly, was positively anti-child, ever again.

Cut them half an inch of slack to express themselves and not unsurprisingly children interact normally and transform into members of society rather than outcasts. Of course, the sheer number of kids in Ireland make them very difficult to ignore. But there is a prevailing attitude in Catholic society, where children are considered important in their own right and therefore included without a second thought.

There are friendly places in the UK that aren’t a themed beer-garden or a hermetically sealed Centre Park but they are not widely advertised and are the exception rather than the rule.

Why can’t we have a blue book for children? It could be called Pooh Book.

Ballymaloe House
Shanagarry, Co.Cork
Tel 00353 (21)4652531
Fax 00353 (21)4652021
website