Ballacowell

Ballacowell is a country bed and breakfast at Sulby, a cream-rendered house with a red-doored porch, standing back from the road behind lawn and hedging.

You come in off the gravel to a hall of painted doors, with the guest rooms all on the ground floor, so there is no case to carry upstairs.

By the hearth

The sitting room has an open fireplace with a cast-iron grate and baskets of logs beside it, a sofa and armchairs pulled round, and framed pictures crowding the wall above. The kitchen behind it is a warm one, wooden cabinets and a terracotta floor, with a dining table where fresh flowers usually stand. Small touches run through the house: a welcome basket of local things, flowers on the dresser, tea and a kettle in the rooms.

The ground-floor rooms

There is a double with a large bed and a twin with two singles. Both are ensuite with a bath or shower, both look onto the garden, and both are furnished the way a family house is rather than a hotel: floral covers, a wardrobe, a seating area, a flat-screen TV and a radio.

The garden side

The garden is the reason to be outside here. It is a mature one, ivy climbing the walls, white hydrangeas and flowering shrubs, with a paved terrace and seating set into the planting and lawn running away to the front of the house.

Sulby and the north

Sulby sits inland in the north of the island, strung along the main road where the river comes down out of its glen, farmland on one side and the northern hills behind. The nearest town is Ramsey, on the coast to the north-east.

Best for

Anyone who would rather have a garden and a fire than a promenade. The ground-floor rooms suit guests who prefer to avoid stairs, and the position in the north makes touring the glens and the coast road straightforward.