Cuil Darach in Clones

16/12/2025: Spent the weekend here while in Clones for a christening. It's a really lovely hotel. The rooms are large, spotless and well decorated with big comfy beds and a great shower. Great breakfasts and dinners - lots of local eating there which is always a good sign - plus friendly and accommodating staff who can't do enough for you. The reception after the christening, on Sunday, was in the hotel too and was very well organised and catered to. The hotel was really busy with several events going on when we arrived on Saturday, but it didn't affect the service we received at all. Highly recommend the Creighton if you find yourself around Clones.

14/11/2025: Creighton Hotel is not merely a place to stay, but a vantage point into the layered soul of Clones. The rooms are quiet and balanced, yet stepping outside you encounter the Round Tower whose stones bear the double handwriting of centuries, the High Cross on the Diamond, and the faint memory of Saint Tighernach’s monastery where manuscripts once whispered before vanishing into legend. The town itself carries the scar of the border division, its streets pausing like unfinished sentences, while the Ulster Canal and the ghost of the GNRI railway remind us of plans interrupted and journeys diverted. As W.B. Yeats observed, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” In Clones, that magic is not loud but subtle, found in the silence of stone and the humor of history. To rest here is to join a philosophical dialogue with time itself.