Imagine your own little piece of paradise, where you wake to stillness, or maybe the gentle whistle of a breeze or the bleating of sheep. Imagine padding into the kitchen, making a pot of tea or coffee and taking your book out to sit at a table overlooking fields of wild bracken and a backdrop of the Atlantic ocean. Imagine wandering up a craggy hillside just before sunset, over a stone stile and finding yourself on top of the world with a vista over the Atlantic that literally takes your breath away. Imagine that every way you turn, the colours of the landscape change, from azure ocean to a patchwork blanket of bright green hills to stone speckled mountainsides. Imagine a place where people take the time to raise a hand in greeting as you pass and where the lilt of a Cork accent welcomes you and takes the time to find out your story and shares their's. There's nothing more to say...the place is Knocknamona and the Beara Peninsula. Gerry grew up here and built Knocknamona on his family farm. He's an exceptional host - interested, interesting, so welcoming and a font of knowledge. It is an exceptional house, beautifully maintained and equipped with literally everything you can think of. Do you need to grate cheese - yep, it's got a grater. Want to make some good coffee - yep, there's a cafetiere. Steak knives, DVDs, books, weighing scales, hairdryer, vacuum, microwave, a water dispenser. It got to the stage where we tried to find something that the kitchen didn't have! It's spacious, comfortable, pristine and that's just the house itself. We spent a lot of time exploring around the immediate area, finding crystal clear lakes for swimming, sitting on the hilltop beside the house basking in the evening sunshine and waxing lyrical about the unbelievable views. People asked were we heading to Killarney or Bantry or further afield. We did drive around a bit, down to Dursey Island, across the beautiful Healy Pass, lunch in O'Neill's in Allihies or Helen's Bar in Killmackillogue, we visited the stunning Derreen Gardens in Lauragh and had an exceptional crab salad in the café there, 15 minutes up the road. We shopped in Kenmare and Castletownbere and bought the amazing Lorge chocolates in Bonane. We went as far as Glengarriff taking in the extraordinary views along the way. But we could happily have wandered around the highways and byways of Ardgroom for a week and never got bored.