Sea Mist House

Archive - all the best places to eat, shop and stay in Ireland. A local guide to local places.
  • Sea Mist House
  • Sea Mist House
  • Sea Mist House
  • Sea Mist House
  • Sea Mist House

In lots of ways, Sheila Griffin’s lovely house is an aleph of Connemara.
By aleph, we mean a place from which you can see the entire picture. Perhaps you are sitting there in the breakfast room, and the light is streaming in the windows, reflected off the litany of flowers in the garden. The light seems intensified, that Western light which is different from anything else (Thirty years ago we asked some Italian tourists, travelling out on the Sky Road, what was the thing about Ireland that they liked the best? ‘The light!’, they answered immediately.)
But it’s not just the light that seems intensified. The flavours on the breakfast plate – the fresh eggs from the house hens; the smoked Connemara fish; the crispy bacon; the elegant coffee – seem intensified and pure also. There is the buzz of conversation, and the hosts running hither and thither, making sure everyone is happy.
This could be the moment that you suddenly ‘get’ Connemara. That instant when you see Connemara, a region unmarked by a border, but a place which everyone who goes there knows.
And it will be thanks to Sheila and her lovely house that you suddenly know why people exalt this special region, why it lodges in your soul, and never leaves. Seamist is the place that unlocks the secrets.

53.4882, -10.0244
Sheila Griffin
Clifden, Connemara, Galway, Co Galway.
+ 353 95 21441

More along the Galway coast

Renvyle House
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The Dough Bros
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Mallmore Country House
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Fergus O’Halloran, Barna Village, County Galway.