Luxury hotel in the Scottish Highlands

Since taking ownership of the lodge just over a year ago, Andy and Rebecca have embarked on a root and branch re-appraisal of every aspect of the business, and have embarked on the long road of modernization and reform. They plan to create a boutique country house hotel experience in a space that exists and operates in synergy with its surroundings.

The menu has been designed, offering the best local ingredients cooked so the flavours and quality can shine, on plate and on palate. If you hanker for haggis stuffed chicken breast smothered in a heavy whisky cream sauce then don’t come, but if you’re after local venison, lamb or west coast salmon cooked beautifully and presented with a light touch then you’ll like what you see. What you won’t see is air mile rich, off season foods such as strawberries in January.

Out with the monster, 1970 pattern boiler the size of a bus and in with two state of the art, latest design condensing boilers, computer controlled for optimum energy consumption. Gone too, is the single, horizontally mounted copper hot water tank, replaced by ultra lagged Swedish sealed systems with space remaining for a third tank, ready to receive solar heated water before it enters the boilers. Some loft insulation didn’t come amiss either, as there was none at all a year ago. The high price of oil does wonders for concentrating the mind on just what we are heating. We worked with the Highland environmental Agency, commissioning a full environmental report and acting on the recommendations as quickly as possible.

Responsible tourism needs both responsible providers and responsible tourists, so we help our guests with clear guidance on the way they can reduce energy consumption in the hotel: bathrobes and towels; leave them in the bath and they’ll be replaced; leave them on the floor and we’ll hang them up for you to use again. Turn TVs off at the wall, turn lights out when leaving the room – everybody by now should know all this, yet there remains a significant view that because a guest is paying for the room they should burn up as much energy as possible to somehow ‘get their money’s worth’. Well it’s no longer just the hotel that pays – everybody does, everybody behaving in such a way brings a global, ozone depleted climate doom bomb that little bit closer.

Hey, but this is Highland Scotland, and up here there is big air, big country and a crisp sense of clean, pure space that few places in Europe can match. It really is breathtakingly beautiful at times, and to keep it so we work hard at minimizing the environmental impact of what leaves the hotel – and that includes our guests. We invite them to give us their rubbish that we may dispose of it properly. We look after their dogs, recommending walks and issuing poop bags if they need them. We appraise them of the Country Access Code in Scotland, of their rights and the attached responsibilities. And of course we lend guidebooks, maps, walking sticks, umbrellas, packed lunches, thermos flasks, coats…….and sometimes we even get the stuff back!

All glass, card, newspaper and waste oil is sent for recycling. We compost all vegetable waste from the kitchen. We are evaluating the purchase of a converter to turn our waste oil into diesel. We don’t produce enough WCO (waste cooking oil) on our own but if we collect enough from local restaurants we could make a little impact, and money. All internal communications are printed on old menus, wines lists and the like. Print cartridges and old mobiles are sent off to a charity that collects these things for recycling. We are members of the Green Tourism Award project and we are looking forward to re-inspection. We hope for a bronze standard, as our work is barely begun. The hotel has been an important local service provider for many years. We are but a small hotel of twelve rooms, but we have big ideas and a firm belief that we have something to offer. We hope you think so too.