A Different View
Make the most of the gems on your own doorstep
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The clear skies and soaring temperatures would have ensured that nobody needed much convincing to holiday close to home over the past week or two – but too often we tend to overlook the gems on our own doorstep.
Recently our brood took a few days to visit our nearest neighbours to the immediate north – and a few days in Mayo was all it took to lift the spirits.
Westport is little more than an hour away, but it is one hell of a tourist hotspot – a spotlessly clean town with a huge choice of hotels, pubs and restaurants, and the world of amenities and facilities within a stone’s throw.
It’s a short hop to Louisburg or Newport – ancestral home of Princess Grace – or Clare Island, adopted home of the Saw Doctors, and the drive up through Maam and Leenane would justify the whole experience on its own.
But this is not just about enjoying the local natural amenities – it’s the fact that forward-thinking hoteliers are working so hard to capitalise on that by finally waking up to the sort of promotion and marketing that the rest of Europe has been at for a generation.
For too long, our tourism industry was reasonably content to sit back and simply point to this legendary Irish welcome, as though a nod in a visitor’s direction made high prices and poor services more palatable.
But no longer – now there are hotel packages with amenities built in, so that the family gets to make the most of their stay.
There is also a greater sense of community and cooperation, in that all of these amenities don’t have to belong to the hotel you’re actually staying in – this is a more holistic approach to holiday-making that ensures you are spoilt for choice.
We stayed in the Castlecourt Hotel in the heart of Westport, where a family room is what it should be – a comfortable place for everyone to retire to after a long day, as opposed to an ordinary room with a couple of fold-out beds that wouldn’t suit a three year old, let alone a pair of rapidly growing teenagers.
Without leaving the hotel, you had the pool and leisure complex as well as the ubiquitous spa, while outside the door you were two minutes from the famous Matt Molloy’s pub, one of the finest hostelries in Ireland.
If ours were younger, they’d probably have enjoyed the Kid’s Club, but the friendly staff at the Castlecourt weren’t proprietorial about their guests – they were only too happy to suggest a myriad of things to do within easy reach.
Indeed they’ve put together a range of attractions at discounted prices for guests – and a rep from each of these providers comes to the hotel every morning to help you make your choices.
Westport House is an obvious starting point, what with everything from its Adventure Island high ropes to its Pirate Adventure Park or even its pitch and putt – but more and more, the big attraction right through the heart of Mayo is the Greenway.
You only have to look at the amount of cyclists around town to see what a success story this has been – and again, they do their best to make sure it’s all manageable; you don’t have to cycle back because they’ll collect you; you can hire a bike, and there are plenty of things to do en route.
But for years the biggest impediment to holidaying at home was the price – if you go to the sunspots, the food and drink was cheaper and you’d get a package holiday for the price of a night in an Irish hotel.
That’s not the case anymore – the Castlecourt, for example, does a three night break for two adults and two children, which includes evening meals in a superlative restaurant, for just over €550.
That may not appear cheap but equally, when you break it down, it’s around €50 each per night for a four star hotel in the heart of one of Ireland’s most popular tourist hotspots.
The specially priced family passes for Westport House and all of its facilities worked out at less than half the normal price, and there was also a cut off the Greenway prices so that you felt you were getting bang for your buck every step of the way.
Little wonder then that the place was packed, as was their sister hotel, the Westport Plaza, next door – but then Westport has been to the forefront of tourism in this country for longer than most.
That’s not to say we don’t have visionary tourism providers in our own midst, because we do – it was just that this was service with a smile and at a price that doesn’t clean out your pocket.
And that’s what holidays, home or away, should be all about.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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