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.

He came across her first 1966 newspaper ads looking for guests, as well as her ledger of guests, from Bishopstown to Belfast and Birmingham, and from Buckinghamshire to Brussels, from the 1960s up until to 1978.

“All of the courses in hospitality I have attended, and people I have met involved in the sector have instilled in me the importance of repeat business,” says Ciarán, “so I decided to write to the addresses and let them know that we are open again, and offering a 50% discount in appreciation of their business since 1965.

“Obviously, it is a long time ago — and many of the people have now passed — but we are hopeful that we will hear from some of the original guests or from family and relatives of the names on the ledger.”

He’s too young to remember his maternal granny Kitty and her tourist guests, but “my mother remembers a lot of them. As a child they, used to bring her to the beach at Barleycove with them, she says that they always loved to help out on the farm, saving the hay and the country life in general.”

She also accepted horse-drawn caravans, charging for the use of a field next to the house.

Ciarán did help his paternal grandmother with a Bantry B&B called Ninorc — Cronin spelled backwards — and has also come forward with his luxury self-catering guesthouse pitch (www.ahakista.ie).

After overseeing seven months of makeover work, the Ahakista house is now quite a bit different to what it was like before.

It’s gone up the comfort scale from what was pretty basic original plumbing to having things like solar panels and the luxury of a hot-tub with bay views, for relaxing warm soaks after walking sections of the peninsula’s popular Sheep’s Head walk.

As a route that’s travelled by about 30,000 walkers a year, this is his target market.

Engineer Ciarán saw the need to diversify from construction in 2009 and is “optimistic about the future of tourism in the country. I’m looks forward to adding my own guest names to the ledger.”