In the past ten years I've been out of the country eight times for the New Year, so it was with a deal of pleasure that this year was spent here. I'm convinced that there's no country in the world that knows how to party the way the Irish do. Sure, there are some places that do a good New Year's Eve, but no where else can keep up the party mood for two weeks. Like any extended party season there's always a lull period, a slight dip in the energy levels, and that tends to fall between St. Stephen's day and New Year's Eve. Which is why an invitation to Prospect, just outside Westport, was such a perfect way of passing those four days. There's nothing quite like an extended house party for keeping the festive mood going, right up to the very end of the year. Good food, good wine and good company made it a year's end to remember.

Getting to Westport means a long drive, made harder by perhaps the very worst stretch of national road in the country. From Roscommon to Mayo, right through the county of Roscommon, the N5 is a rutted, pot-holed, twisty, badly surfaced narrow track rarely more than 10 metres wide. It made me miserable driving along it to go to a party, so God help the poor sods who have to drive it daily for work or commerce. It's as though Roscommon is the county that central government - and its own public representatives - have forgotten about. I read that there are grand plans for motorway networks around the country, but while these plans remain under discussion and still far from reality, my advice would be to try and avoid the N5 if you can, to save your temper and your car's running gear.

Mind you, when you get to Clew Bay all the travails of the journey seems worth it. Even on dull, cloudy days with leaden skies the light still plays prettily on the hills and the islands of the bay can look stunning, pricking the still waters of the bay like buttons on satin. Walks by the sea or in the hills filled our days here, so getting up to leave was a bit of a struggle. I was determined that we should try a good restaurant on the western sea-board before we left, so it was out with Golden Pages and with Georgina Campbell's guide to pick the spot. After an half-an-hour's telephoning all I had learnt was that most restaurants were either closed for lunch, closed for the week, or closed until February. Not one to despair easily, I suggested to my wife that we drive the harbour in Westport and see what was open. This simple stratagem meant that we found 'The Creel', a busy little restaurant overlooking the bay.

Inside it was decorated in that style that's a mixture of plenty of pine - tables, chairs and dressers - as well as brass and copper bric-a-brac, all set in quite a plain, modern room. It's a combination that works rather well, twinning homely things like old sewing machines and model boats with crisp, hard-edged décor. In 'The Creel' the menu is on a blackboard over by the dessert counter so you go there first to make your choices. There's quite an extensive choice: the starters consisted of a variety of pannini with fillings like ham, brie and crispy bacon; chicken liver pate, focaccia, leek and asparagus soup and sea-food chowder. Main courses, which were all around the €10 mark, offered Thai chicken noodles, fresh salmon, lamb hot-pot, sausage and mash, chicken Landaise, linguine with a sea-food sauce, the seasonal turkey and ham, tex-mex beef and chilli bean burger and a chicken Korma.

After just a little deliberation my wife decided on the sea-food pate as a starter and followed that with the sea-food linguine, while I chose the sea-food chowder and then the chicken Korma for my main course. Obviously this preponderance of sea-food in our choices was because the sea was in sight from our window table.

The wine list is brief - four whites and five reds - but it's moderately priced, most of the wines are between €16 and €20. After three days of celebration, wine wasn't high on our priority list, so we both had a bottle of grape juice and a bottle of sparkling water, which I discovered, mix rather well together.

Both of us got excellent starters, Susie's sea-food pate had a really fresh tang to it, and it had a well-judged mix of fish and shell-fish, a description that would apply equally well to my chowder, which I drained to the last drop. Susie was just as enthusiastic about her main course, the sea-food linguine, which she enjoyed. I'm perhaps more of a pedant than she, and noticed the substitution of spaghetti for linguine, a small, but to an Italian, important difference. To my eyes it was more like a fish chowder with spaghetti in it than a pasta dish served with a sauce - still it made my wife happy. The sauce on my chicken Korma was very good, but for me the dish was spoiled by very undercooked rice which was hard enough to make chewing it a real chore. I gave up after a bit and thought about desserts instead.

The choices for dessert included a lot of very delicious looking things covered in cream, but the new healthy me took over and ordered a plain apple tart with no cream. A huge slice was more than I could eat, but it was tasty and had a generous filling of apple. A cup of coffee for me finished the meal which came €42.35, a moderate price for a decent lunch with friendly service in pleasant surroundings.