Co Cavan: €295,000Steph and Tony Booth fell in love with a house in an area of 'awesome grandeur' . As they prepare to leave it, Steph Booth explains why its new owner must feel the same way too

It was the house with the mattress stuffed up the chimney that did it. Tony had a gigantic tantrum. After a tiring couple of days he was utterly convinced we would never find a house we liked.

He was, though, hungry. As any wife will testify hungry husbands are a difficult breed. Feed them and they become entirely different, far more equable beasts and over lunch Tony decided we should, after all, go and view the property we had arranged to see that afternoon.

We walked into the house in Moneygashel and despite the earlier bad mood and the grey, rainy November weather, immediately fell in love with it.

It was a two-up, two-down house with an upstairs bathroom. We made an offer and by the following February the house was ours.

We had wanted to downsize, but even so the house was too small and we set about transforming it into the home of our dreams. We spent a lot of time and money making the place perfect. No detail was too small - after all, we had sold up in England intending to stay here.

We extended at the back putting on a good-size kitchen, laundry room and a study. I love to cook and I was able to design the kitchen from scratch so there is plenty of workspace, a high quality Rangemaster cooker and plenty of room for a table and chairs. This means not only that we can eat in the kitchen, but that family and friends can sit around drinking wine and gossiping whilst food is prepared.

We added an extra bedroom over the kitchen so now upstairs there is a bathroom and three double bedrooms one of them en suite. I suppose what is currently my study could very easily be turned into a fourth bedroom with the laundry room transformed into an en suite bathroom.

On the east side of the house we built a garden room. The existing sittingroom then became a diningroom comfortably taking a table for eight. The sun streams in through the garden room windows in the morning and as it is also south facing it is a particularly good room for growing plants. I am an avid collector of orchids and they thrive in the light and warmth as do all the other plants in there. It is a wonderful, serene space to stretch out on a couch and read a book with music playing quietly in the background.

A great joy of this house is its fantastic location in the Cuilcagh Mountains. Friends visiting from England for the first time all asked the same question - "Where did you find this place?"

Neither they nor we could believe our good fortune. If you want gentle, green rolling hills this is not the place for you. This is wild, mythical, rugged Ireland - the Ireland of Neolithic ruins and warrior chieftains. It is an area of awesome, granite grandeur where the weather gods will smile on you one moment and rain down their fury the next.

You would definitely need, as we did, to invest in a telescope. The inky black night skies with more stars than you ever realised existed, are breathtakingly beautiful.

You can take off for a walk or a bicycle ride over the mountain and not see another person the whole time. It can be exhilarating and at the same time good for the soul. If you like sailing or fishing Lough MacNean and Lough Allen are within easy reach and there are also pretty and easy walks around them.

There is shooting at the nearby Glenfarne Gun Club and golf to be played at Blacklion Golf Club. So, if you wanted you really could embrace the whole countryside thing with gusto!

If that's not what you want then, the house offers peaceful, tranquil surroundings for more sedate activities -- like writing, painting or, day dreaming whilst watching the ever changing mood of the mountain.

As you can probably tell from this description, we love our home and therefore make one proviso about selling it. We have to feel you will love it as much as we have done and without that there's no sale.

Moneygashel, Blacklion, Co. Cavan is on the market through Sligo/Dowra auctioneer Noel Keegan at offers over €295,000