Christmas Holiday Getaway!!

A much needed and highly enjoyable break - and a fantastic time, dogs included!!  Normally we don't go away over Christmas - and usually spend it with our family, but with the events of the past year - and to be honest the last couple of years - we felt like we deserved it and just wanted to get away, just us two and our furry kids of course had to be included too.  We found this hotel in the back of a dog 'hobby' type magazine, and as much as it was quite expensive, a while ago Alex decided to bite the bullet and make the booking so that we could spoil ourselves.

Reading a few of the 'tripadvisor' style reviews left us with a bit of an odd feeling about the hotel, some incredibly positive, and some oddly negative about the strangest things!!  Anyway, we went with an open mind and low expectations - just in case of disappointment, but we were pleasantly surprised and both had a lovely time - though we could see why it was a bit of a 'love/hate' place for some.

I think one of the most important things that we realised soon into our stay, was that the hotel was probably one of the most dog friendly places we have ever been to.  By this, I don't just mean dog 'tolerant' but actually genuinely interested, friendly, accommodating and welcoming of all their canine customers (16 on Christmas Day!) including providing meals (if wanted), strokes/fuss and biscuits at regular intervals, which was just lovely and really refreshing to find.

We had a lovely ensuite double room, with a fantastic powerful shower and with a nice view over the front grounds/gardens and down across the sea in the near distance, more than pleasant enough for us. The hotel was set in its own grounds of who knows how many acres that we couldn't even begin to fully explore in the time we were there, and was literally five minutes walk from the beautifully clean, white, sandy, dog friendly beach.

The weather around pretty much most of the country was wet, rainy, stormy and cold, including home before we left, and the journey down too, so we were extremely lucky in our four days away!!  It ended up that every day was good enough - or better, some days were sunny and quite summer like - for us to be able to have one very long walk or two shorter walks, mainly on the beach but also down within the grounds.

We also took the time to see a couple of local historical landmarks, took hundreds of pictures (mainly of dogs, of course, coincidentally they are quite often in the same order in pictures, complete fluke!!), and spent a lot of time together in the hotel just relaxing, making friends with other guests - human and canine, sitting in front of the fire with the dogs, and eating and drinking far too much rich food and generally not doing a lot!!  We're certainly considering the possibility of going there again, if it was anything like this year then it was so relaxing, gave us some time together not stressing and the dogs loved it too, we all had a lovely time.