Down a long drive off a by-road between Collinstown and Castlepollard, in a beautifully scenic area awash with lakes, gentle hills and rich farmland, you’ll find Lough Bishop - a working organic farm where Helen and Christopher Kelly offer a warm welcome and a genuine Irish family home experience.
The early 19th century farmhouse has been carefully renovated in a sympathetic manner - striking décor combining period and contemporary craft furniture, log fires and old pictures with modern comforts like power showers and central heating.
If you order before noon, a set dinner is available and you’ll enjoy excellent home-cooked food, some grown or reared on the farm. It’s probably the only place in Ireland you’ll get a chance to eat purebred traditional Irish Moiled beef as well as home produced lamb, free range eggs and fruit - and your meal will probably include foods from other local producers too, carefully sourced to showcase the fine foods the area has to offer.
An after-dinner stroll down the drive will bring you to the Kelly’s award-winning pure bred Irish draught horses and afterwards you can enjoy relaxing in front of a log fire in the drawing room, well stocked with books.
Accommodation is comfortable, in good-sized rooms which are free from the intrusions of modern life - no TV or radio (but no tea or coffee-making facilities either) – and have neat, well-designed ensuite bathrooms with power showers (one also has a bath).
Everything is spotless and gleaming, and it’s a very hospitable house, run by a caring couple who really do provide the perfect B&B experience - it’s a family home but equipped for guests who are guests of that family.
And you should leave on a high note too, after enjoying delicious home baked bread, fresh fruit and apple juice from the orchard at breakfast.
While the breakfast menu is not long, every single item on it - from Helen’s homemade granola (‘with Kilbeggan Organic Oats and honey from our bees’) to the Bell Lane Coffee from Mullingar - is local or home produced. The cooked breakfast features ‘eggs from our hens’, sausages and dry-cured bacon from Thomas Doherty craft butchers of Kells and smoked black pudding from the famous ‘Smokin’ Butcher’ Hugh Maguire in Ashbourne. And then there are the breads (both soda and sourdough), homemade marmalade and a whole rake of preserves made with ‘fruit from the orchard, garden or around the farm’. There can't be too many other menus anywhere offering such simple, honest, quality - like everything else at Lough Bishop, it's a gem.
