Outside of Athlone we found, at last, our perfect B & B.  Situated in lovely farm country, St. Ruth's Milltown Farmhouse is a big, warm gracious house with a spacious but cozy parlor and dining room.  Our rooms are big and warm and furnished with beautiful antiques.  As I paged through a Laura Ashley book of home decorating, it occurred to me that the owner of St. Ruth's, Helen O'Brien, must have been inspired by Laura Ashley, because this home, while filled with old, dark furniture and woodwork, is cheerfully, elegantly decorated and brightly lit with delicate fixtures.

From our bedrooms we look out dormer windows over the finely landscaped front lawn and beyond to a hill where sheep are grazing.  It's a peaceful setting, not at all how we expected to spend New Year's Eve.  But the four of us were thrilled to have found St. Ruth's and were reluctant to leave it for a few hours in a pub.  So Sarah and Matthew, with permission of the mistress of the house, took command of the kitchen and prepared a scrumptious spaghetti dinner, and we rang in the new year with a few quiet hours of reading and watching TV by the fire.

New Year's...Before starting off for Dublin, we took a leisurely walk down the lane beyond St. Ruth's in the balmy morning and discovered that we're surrounded by softly rolling hills of pasture and farmland.  Richard and I watched a sheepherder guide his flock to a fresh side of the hill, and we climbed atop another green hilly pasture for a picturesque view of the countryside.