Traveling in Ireland, I have almost always had amazing experiences with those who run bed and breakfasts and hotels. Unfortunately, Forest Hill Bed and Breakfast was the worst BnB I visited in Ireland, and I would not recommend staying there.
I booked Forest Hill for two nights, as I was really looking forward to seeing Connemara for the first time.
Myself and my boyfriend arrived late the first day, due to prior commitments on the way to Forest Hill. Of course, when we arrived, our room wasn't heated because the woman who ran the BnB got a late call from us and previously had believed we wouldn't show up. I regret not calling earlier and understand that any chill in the room at this time was my fault for not giving prior notice of a delayed arrival.
However, during the night it got very cold, to the point that I woke up at 5:40am and couldn't get back to sleep for another hour. As I have asthma, which can be aggravated by cold temperatures, I knew that I wouldn't get a good rest with such low temperatures.
In the morning, as soon as I was out of our room, I talked to the woman who worked at the BnB and asked if she could turn up the heat a bit more or give us a small heater for our room. I told her that this was because I had awoken in the middle of the night due to the chill.
Immediately, and shockingly to both my boyfriend and myself, she told us that she could arrange for us to go to another bed and breakfast in the area. She stated that she and her family were incredibly hot (and in this, I think was trying to say that turning up the heat was not an option). She did mention a heated blanket that I could use, but made no offer to turn on the heating a little bit more during the night or give us a small heater we could use so as to save on heating for the rest of the house.
I don't think it's too much to ask for a BnB to have sufficient heating, and though she assured us multiple times that Forest Hill wanted its guests to be happy and they wanted to keep their 'good reputation', her main option for keeping us warm was sending us away to another BnB.
As well, after talking to her a bit about how it was too cold, I mentioned that I have asthma and that it can get worse if I am too cold. And, I can honestly say, I have never had anyone make me feel like so much of a cripple for having asthma as she did in those ten minutes. She repeatedly stated that I had a 'medical condition'. She also had the gall to say that she wasn't offended if we wanted to leave, because she knew I had a 'medical condition' and she wanted the people that stay at Forest Hill to be as happy as possible!
It boggles my mind even now that she would say she wasn't offended for essentially kicking us out of the BnB we had booked! My asthma is not a life-threatening condition, and it would have gotten better with the simplest of actions - turning on the heat. We were only planning to be there for one more night, as well.
And then it got worse. She told us that she had called several BnBs in which we could possibly stay, and that she had found one that had an open room for us. When I asked her for directions, she led us to a very large and general map, and I took a picture of the place she had pointed on the map and we were off.
We drove about 20 minutes after turning left where the woman who worked at Forest Hill had instructed us to, at a particular crossroads. After seeing no sign of the BnB she had mentioned, we spoke to two people on the street, one of them a bed and breakfast owner herself. Both said that they knew of no such BnB in that area, but the woman who ran her own BnB said that we should go back to the crossroads, and go straight (Forest Hill should have directed us right at the crossroads, when they had directed us left).
So, we drove to the crossroads and past it for about another 30 minutes or so. By this point it was around 12, and we had left Forest Hill at around 10:10am.
We found the bed and breakfast that Forest Hill had directed us to... And it had been closed so long that there were spiderwebs on all of the doors.
A worker at this new BnB was in the shed feeding kittens, so we talked to her and she informed us that the BnB had closed early for the season because the owner had been so successful this year.
It was already around 12:50pm and we had to meet family in Galway, so we couldn't spend any more time searching for BnBs. After visiting Galway, we called Forest Hill again because we still didn't have a place to stay. I called three times, and on the fourth call, an hour after the first call, the Forest Hill woman picked up (I should note that I'm not using her name because I'm not exactly sure what her name was - I called her Dolores three times, since the BnB promotional materials said that Forest Hill was run by a Dolores, and she never corrected me, but then I met her sister who introduced herself to me as Dolores and told me her sister - who I had been calling Dolores - was called Pauline... It was confusing so I'm not exactly sure what to call her).
After asking if I could rent a room again, I was told that the room had already been taken, and there were no other rooms available. Fair enough, I had waited a while to call after our long trip to find the alternative BnB. However, when I informed her that the BnB she had 'contacted' was actually closed for the season, she seemed shocked and said something along the lines of, 'Oh, I do hope she's (the woman who runs the alternative BnB) is all right, I hope nothing happened to her'.
I told her that in fact, the owner of the BnB had had such a successful season that she was taking a vacation. Again, Forest Hill seemed shocked.
After searching for two hours for this alternative, heated BnB, only to find it closed and us homeless for the night, and our afternoon in Connemara wasted, it was beyond frustrating that this Forest Hill proprietor acted as shocked as we were that the BnB which she had 'called' was closed.
We found another very lovely BnB and had a great time, so my recommendation would be to avoid Forest Hill (and the accompanying frustration/temperature!) and travel to some of the other very nice BnBs in the area.
This was a very long post but I hoped to be as detailed as possible for giving such a low rating.
