Django's Hostel (named for the lovely hostel dog, Django, himself called after the jazzer Django Reinhardt) is set in Cloughjordan Eco-Village, an intentional community of people who have built their homes on the land of an old Anglo-Irish estate to live in a green and earth-friendly way. The hostel is super-clean, with a catering-style steel kitchen supplied with sturdy white crockery, plenty of good pots and pans and a couple of electric cookers. The rooms vary in size - we shared a family room, with a double bed and bunks and a nice ensuite shower and facilities; that was €80 each for three days. You can also sleep in a dormitory, or in single rooms. In the kitchen, a fridge has common supplies on the top shelf (left by the very nice Django proprietor Pa or contributed by departing guests), and lower shelves where guests can store their own food while they're staying. There are plenty of wooden tables and chairs where you can eat looking out at the beautiful fruit trees and flowers of the village. Ingredients like olive oil, soya sauce, etc, which you normally remember, cursing, are available. There's a pleasant living room to relax in, with squashy chairs and couch, and pictures - nice abstracts and a couple of pictures of Django Reinhardt, natch. Cloughjordan town has a couple of excellent cafés - The Middle Country, spacious and crafty with lots of cakes and salads, and...Django's Hostel (named for the lovely hostel dog, Django, himself called after the jazzer Django Reinhardt) is set in Cloughjordan Eco-Village, an intentional community of people who have built their homes on the land of an old Anglo-Irish estate to live in a green and earth-friendly way.
The hostel is super-clean, with a catering-style steel kitchen supplied with sturdy white crockery, plenty of good pots and pans and a couple of electric cookers. The rooms vary in size - we shared a family room, with a double bed and bunks and a nice ensuite shower and facilities; that was €80 each for three days. You can also sleep in a dormitory, or in single rooms.
In the kitchen, a fridge has common supplies on the top shelf (left by the very nice Django proprietor Pa or contributed by departing guests), and lower shelves where guests can store their own food while they're staying. There are plenty of wooden tables and chairs where you can eat looking out at the beautiful fruit trees and flowers of the village. Ingredients like olive oil, soya sauce, etc, which you normally remember, cursing, are available.
There's a pleasant living room to relax in, with squashy chairs and couch, and pictures - nice abstracts and a couple of pictures of Django Reinhardt, natch.
Cloughjordan town has a couple of excellent cafés - The Middle Country, spacious and crafty with lots of cakes and salads, and Sheelagh na Gig, a bookshop-cum-cafe which also sells fresh local farm eggs.
Cloughjordan Eco-Village has brought a cosmopolitan feel to the sleepy little town, and many languages and accents can be heard and a multicultural feel is central. Ninety-seven per cent of the children ride their bicycles to school, and eco-villagers have a right to an allotment of their own, and can buy great organic produce from the village's farm.
The eco-villagers recently built an amphitheatre for plays and music; their homes are surrounded by 200 apple trees from 75 native Irish varieties.
The local bakery, multi-award-winning Riot Rye, is run by a family who have been making and selling organic food for two generations; their sourdough breads in several delicious varieties are for sale in the Centra shop at one end of town. Riot Rye's proprietors also run an extremely popular bakery school.
There are many wonderful walking trails and nice cycles near the town, including Knocknacree Wood, dedicated to poet, teacher and revolutionary Thomas MacDonagh, born and raised in the town (his statue looks benignly down the main street).
The town is a centre for amateur drama - to the extent that two to three nights every week in winter, the drama society is filled with rehearsing people from town and eco-village. There is even a weekly course in circus skills for local children - it's to be expected that the next generation of Irish actors and musicians will come from here.
I thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Django's Hostel. We were warmly welcomed by Pa (and Django, who normally lives quietly upstairs but came down to greet us on his way to walks). I would certainly stay here again.More