The Irish National Heritage Park here in my home county of Wexford are bringing sleepovers back with their ringfort stayover experience, and it is awesome.
For the bargain price of €400, you can rent the ring fort in the park for the night. You’ll stay in the big house in the ringfort itself and you’ll have the whole park to yourself overnight. It is the ultimate slumber party for grown ups and I was lucky enough to share the experience with some of my besties last weekend. You can get all the useful booking information from the Irish National Heritage Park website, so I’ll keep that to a minimum here.
So firstly the house… The big house has 3 double beds with comfy mattresses so it’s designed for 6 people. There’s no problem if you want to book for a bigger group; you can just pay a surcharge for the extra people. We were a party of 10 so the park provided us with 10 sleeping bags and we brought a couple of inflatable beds. Just be aware that the big house is basically one room and has no window so you need to choose ringfort buddies that you’re super comfortable being around.
Additionally, choose your bed wisely. There’s a raised bed that looks seriously cool but it’s up a ladder so remember you’ll need to navigate that every time you get in and out of bed. It’s also pretty close to the roof, which is thatched and may be home to a spider or two…
There’s a central hearth in the house that we didn’t use. We didn’t need it for heat and didn’t want to fill the house with smoke so we used the main campfire outside for atmosphere, toasting marshmallows and generally talking nonsense after a few beverages. The park leaves a supply of firewood in the corner of the house, which is plenty to last the night, even if you have a couple of vampires who stay out there until morning.
The toilets are outside the ringfort, in a building with separate ladies and gents, plus hot showers. They’re down a bit of a pathway and it’s dark, so you get to live dangerously on the way down and back, because there’s a pretty high probability that someone from your group is going to be lying in wait to scare the absolute shit out of you.
Once the park closed at 6.30 it was all ours until the next morning. I’ve always chosen my squad wisely, so my 9 parkmates for the night were the best I could have asked for. There’s a lot to be said for enjoying the simplest of things in the most unusual of settings with some of the best people on earth.
We strolled around the park in the stunningly fashionable period costumes that were provided for us. We sat in the Viking ship drinking beer and eating Jaffa Cakes and taking really ridiculous photos with the beautiful river Slaney as a backdrop. We wandered up to the round tower, taking in the views and enjoying the rare chance to take as many pictures as we wanted without anyone to disturb us. We hung out in the crannog until some swallows who were nesting there let us know they wanted us to leave. We ate dinner in some truly unique surroundings (we chose to arrange our own but the park can also supply a traditional stew to heat over the fire).
I was first up the next morning so I had the pleasure of exploring the park again, on my own this time. I got to check out all the stuff I missed the day before, including the monastery, the dolmen and a pretty cool fairy garden. I recommend taking the guided tour that’s included in the price. I was late arriving so I missed most of it.
For anyone looking for luxury stays and pampering, this experience isn’t for you. It’s a chance to go back to basics and appreciate the simple things. It’s a different way to spend a night; it’s relaxing and humbling and a reminder that we don’t really need constant entertainment or all the modern gadgets we’ve become so used to having. It’s an opportunity to enjoy our natural environment without all the noise and confusion that seems to surround us everywhere we go nowadays.
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”. I can think of no place better to stop and look around than in a ringfort in the national heritage park. So what are you waiting for?
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