Bantry's Maritime Hotel.
Convenient and Comfortable Gateway to West Cork
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| The Natural Growing Company display |
If you are intending to stay in Bantry, then make it a Thursday night. Why? Because the fabulous Bantry Market takes over the town on Fridays. It is huge with all kinds of everything on offer.
The market is not all about food, far from it, though you can get quite a lot of it there. Gubbeen of course have their cheese and smoked meats and there are eggs, potatoes and vegetables, not to mention fruit and other produce, are all available.There are a hot food stands as well.
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| Pasta mains at Maritime |
You can buy carpets and other household items, bric-a-brac galore and certainly lots and lots of tools. There are stalls selling hand tools, a whole range of gloves (mostly for work) and you may find one selling fishing gear.
An amazing market. You can buy anything here, from a needle to an octopus, from a glove to a carpet, and live chickens (even more animals on the first Friday of summer months when a fair is added to the event). The receptionist at the hotel told us that those first Fridays were the days to visit!
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| Outdoor dining facilty in the square |
And that Maritime Hotel is our usual base when we are in the town by the Atlantic. It is comfortable and so well situated, so close to the central square, on the main road to nearby magnificent drives both east (Sheep’s Head, and Mizen) and west (Beara, the Healy Pass). It is a friendly place and another advantage of staying on a Thursday is that they provide music in the bar. Don’t worry if you can’t make Thursdays as other nights will be just as good!
Anyhow we were there recently on a Thursday (Mar 30th) and it was lashing, so bad we couldn’t take a planned stroll through the town. But we had arrived fine and dry thanks to their superb car park. It is just across the road and underground with a lift up to the reception or to your room. Excellent.
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| Maritime fish cakes |
We had been well filled at lunch in the Killarney Brewery and Distillery in Fossa and didn’t need a big dinner so we headed to the hotel bar. Glad to see that they had 9 White Deer Kolsch, one of our favourite drinks on draught plus quite a list of bottled craft beer. The Kolsch went down well followed by a very enjoyable Green Spot.
Plenty of choice on the menu: soups, sandwiches, starters, mains and Roisín’s desserts plus an impressive list of specials. CL went for one of the latter, the Salmon and Sweetcorn Fishcakes. This was billed as a starter but wasn’t far off main dish size. Never got sweetcorn in a fish cake before but these, with a side salad, were very good indeed.
My pick was the Seafood Pasta (locally caught Shellfish and Seafood bound in Rich Tomato Sauce Served with Garlic Bread). No shortage of fish and the sauce brought it all together. Happy with that and my later Green Spot!
No Green Spot in the morning as breakfast was served in the rather splendid Ocean Restaurant. Well, it was more self-service. There were a few items, including pancakes, that could be ordered for the kitchen but, after muesli and fruit and juice of course, we headed for the buffet and build our own version of the full, maybe partial, Irish. Either way, it was quite satisfactory.
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| O'Driscoll's fish, of Schull, sure get around |
A few minutes later and we were strolling along the square and through the market stalls. First though we saw how the town had taken to outdoor dining with a variety of covered seating places.
We had one particular stall in mind and were glad to see it there just off the northern end of the square where we filled a pretty big box with plants, a few herbs, plus spinach, mixed lettuce, and curly kale, all from the local Natural Growing Company. Not the easiest carry back to the carpark but we made it, said goodbye to Bantry and its market and headed for the city.
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| The Maritime (from a previous visit) |
