The Barn has wonderfully friendly owners, greeting us with home-made soda bread and scones on arrival, together with their little dog Molly! The Barn is clean and quirky with excellent facilities in the kitchen, a decent sound system and TV with DVD player and an iPod dock / FM radio. There's an impressive log burner which we didn't need to use but would be very welcoming on a damp or cold day, and small booster electric heaters in the bathroom and bedroom if necessary. The bed was comfy and warm (without being hot). One thing to note is that as this is a converted barn, there are inevitably quite a few spiders etc around - no problem for us but less good for arachnophobes!
The upstairs bedroom would be great for kids or occasional adult use.
The shower is great too, with lots of hot water.
One thing that's worth being aware of if thinking about renting The Barn is that it uses a Swedish chemical toilet rather than a normal one. It's definitely more eco-friendly, as it splits solids from liquids and lets nature process things naturally; however in practice we really didn't get on with it and ended up avoiding using it. Campers would, I'm sure, be fine with it, as would the more adventurous but those used to modern loos beware! Not sure it would be suitable for kids really either.
The location is very quiet but only 10 minutes to Joyce's supermarket in Athenry which is open till 11pm 7 days a week. Next to Joyce's is a great little cafe (Mocha Beans) which does good cooked breakfasts, bagels etc, which is useful as Athenry itself has virtually nothing apart from a couple of pubs. Oranmore, about 15 minutes down the road, is a much better bet for food and drink if you don't fancy the horrendous traffic jams of Galway city! There's also a limited train service from Athenry to Oranmore and Galway and beyond.
The Wifi works ok but is right on the limit of range and is fast enough for web browsing but not videos or YouTube for instance.
All in all we enjoyed our stay in The Barn and exploring the surrounding area.