Nire Valley farmhouse B&B wins Georgina Campbell Irish Food & Hospitality award

A farmhouse B&B in the Nire Valley near Clonmel has won a prestigious Georgina Campbell Irish Food & Hospitality award. 

Ballymacarbry's Glasha Farmhouse run by Olive O'Gorman was named B&B of the Year at the national awards ceremony in the InterContinental Hotel in Dublin last week. 

The Georgina Campbell Awards recognise and honour Ireland’s standard-bearers in food and hospitality in Ireland.  

Award winners are chosen through a rigorous programme of anonymous assessment visits over a year-round process. 

Winners are nominated solely by an independent assessment team.

The B&B of The Year award citation praised Glasha Farmhouse as a "relaxed country retreat that visitors to Ireland dream of finding" and simply a "lovely place to stay. 

It also praises the farmhouse for having "spacious thoughtfully appointed rooms" and "plenty of comfy lounging space" and lauds Olive as an "exceptionally welcoming hands-on home" who even makes a delicious home-cooked dinner for her guests. 

Olive O'Gorman, who opened the B&B with  which Olive and her late husband Paddy opened 24 years ago,  said she was thrilled and surprised to receive the award. 

Clearly her B&B's reputation has spread far and wide as her guests come from all over the world. 

"We are full at the moment. We get a lot of Irish visitors and Americans and for the first time we had people from Croatia staying with us. I asked them why and they said a lot of Irish come to Croatia and they decided to come here and see the country. 

“We also get French, Italian and Spanish guests." 

She doesn't believe Brexit will have much of an impact on her business.  The number of English visitors to Ireland dropped at the time of the recession and hasn't really increased again. Despite the economic uncertainty surrounding Brexit, Olive reports she is already getting a lot of bookings for 2020. 

.