Guesthouse visitors invited back to visit after 33 years

THERE’S a touch of the Rip Van Winkles about the re-emergence of a West Cork guesthouse back in the bed-nights business after dozy decades of dereliction and being used to store old silage wrap.

The Ahakista house’s first paying guests back in the 1960s have just been written to, being thanked for their former custom — and have been offered half-price rates if they’d like to stay again.

The idea came to 27-year old entrepreneurial civil engineer Ciarán Cronin, when he started the seven-month renovation of his late maternal grandmother Kitty McCarthy’s roadside farmhouse.