The Lodge at Ashford Castle

The Lodge at Ashford Castle was our favorite stay while in Ireland. The food in The Lodge Dining Room was the best we had. Louchlagn and Clement were wonderful servers and people! Don’t miss the falcrony school. We had Elise as a teacher and she was wonderful. Archery was a blast, too. Beautiful grounds!

Rooms are nice, art is great. Maid service quite attentive. Wildes Restaurant is a hard NO. There’s an easily defined difference between “cooked to Ireland temp standards” and obliterated in micro oven. Laura at Quay Bar/Bistro made the whole stay worthwhile. Five stars isn’t high enough for her. If you stay, don’t eat at Wildes and don’t get a package bc you’ll be told Wildes is the only option. Even breakfast up there was bad. We paid for a meal downstairs when we had another dinner included. (Thought they told us we had 3choices for dinner-guess not) No thanks. Again, yay Laura, our pleasure!

The Lodge was comfortable but had minor niggles such as a bathroom drawer under the sink in the bathroom that would not close, the bottom of the toilet, by the bend was badly stained and unpleasant to see. At breakfast, on one day there was a shortage of yogurt and the mixed fruit bowl comprised apple and a couple orange segments. It seemed impossible to get toast that was properly browned, it came as just slightly brown on one side and completely untouched the other side. When my wife asked a waitress to ensure the toast was properly browned it came out black and hidden under an omelette. Most annoying was the castle being off limits, we had planned to have dinner and afternoon tea but were unable to take either and were not permitted to go into the grounds for 3 days. Overall, disappointing and not expected with the Red Carnation Group which we have been enjoying for many years.