The Torridon Is The Ultimate Rural Scottish Retreat

Fiona Duncan takes an overnight train for an idyllic weekend in one of Scotland’s top five-star hotels, The Torridon in Wester Ross.

Review: The Torridon Hotel, Wester Ross, Scotland

You want to unwind? Spend a few days in a hotel where you can truly relax, reset, find your rhythm once again? Where you will be as well cared for as you are captivated by your surroundings? Where timelessness exists. 

After more than three decades visiting and writing about British hotels, I have a handful of contenders for Best Reset, but here is my winner. And here is my recipe for your own perfect escape.

Getting There

First, getting there. Not many of us live in the far north of Scotland and a smooth journey to this far-flung hotel is important. You could fly, of course, or catch the train from Euston to Inverness, which takes eight hours; from there it’s an hour and a half on by hire car or chauffeur-driven car organised by the hotel (I can recommend Gary McCarthy). Or you could opt, for maximum enjoyment and minimum hassle, for a return trip on the Caledonian Sleeper which leaves Euston at 8pm and reaches Inverness at 8am the following morning. It’s a great experience and all part of the fun.

There’s nothing more relaxing yet invigorating than arriving at a calm bastion of good living in a remote and beautiful place. The road from Inverness swoops through glens and past lochs, with round and jagged hills, made from some of the oldest rock in the world, piling up around and fine views of Loch Maree in the distance. At Kinlochewe, a single track with passing places continues for another ten miles to Glen Torridon and its luxurious hotel by a rushing river that spills into Upper Loch Torridon which in turn merges with the Atlantic Ocean. 

Ben Damph House, as it was originally called, was built by William King-Noel, first Earl of Lovelace, who was married to Lord Byron’s one legitimate daughter, Ada, a brilliant mathematician and early pioneer of computing. The neat Scottish baronial shooting lodge with conical clock tower took 20 years to construct and was finished in 1887, long after Ada had died. In the hall and dining room are carved inscriptions celebrating the 50th year of Queen Victoria’s reign in that year.

Nothing much has changed. If the sudden appearance of the house in its majestic and ancient surroundings – two Munros, Beinn Eighe and Beinn Alligin are both in view – is comforting enough, it’s what you find inside that brings an extra blanket.

Inside The Hotel

Dan and Rohaise Rose-Bristow took over the Torridon, which became a guesthouse in the 1960s, from her parents in 2004 and have gently transformed it into the five-star property it is today. Incredibly, given today’s reliance on hotel groups and millionaire backers, they have succeeded in doing so without any external investment: instead, they assiduously plough as much of the profits as they can back into the hotel, allowing it to grow and improve over time. Their greatest expenditure has been on staff accommodation – specially built individual pods – for without it, here in this prehistoric landscape of ancient Lewisian gneiss, Torridian sandstone and gleaming white Cambrian quartzite – there could be no staff.

In the hands of such caring owners, all the elements of the hotel are in balance. The food, from Danny Young, who started as a 16 year old and rose to become head chef at Northcote under Lisa Goodwin-Allen, is exceptional – honest yet elegant and inventive – and can be eaten either in the formal 1887 restaurant (go for the tasting menu) or in the charming separate bistro Bo & Muc, with its café curtains, marble topped tables and jewel-coloured armchairs in the bar. As for the inviting bedrooms and reception rooms, their colours reflect the many hues of the mountain opposite, using warm velvets and fabrics by GP & J Baker plus a lovely carpet in the drawing room designed by Wilton from a marbled paper that caught the eye of Rohaise, who is responsible for all the interiors. 

Is there a spa? Yes, it’s the great outdoors: Wellness without Walls as Dan and Rohaise call it. At the Torridon, you can do as little as walk round the vast yew-enclosed kitchen garden, filled with flower borders, lawns, orchards, beehives, fruit, vegetables and herbs for the chefs. Or you can take one of the waymarked trails that lead straight from the hotel or – and here is a magic ingredient – you can book time with Veshengo Purrum, who runs Torridon Outdoors. Want to bag a Munro? Try gorge scrambling, scuba diving, snorkelling, kayaking, clay pigeon shooting or archery, or simply hike in the hills? A qualified mountain guide and outdoor instructor, Veshengo’s zen-like approach to life is as calming and sensible as his instructions are clear and his knowledge of the flora, fauna, geology and legends of the region are profound. He’s also a connoisseur of whisky, if you want to discuss that all important subject as you walk. 

Rooms and suites in the main building at The Torridon are expensive, in line with other British country house hotels. But there are more affordable rooms in The Stables, simple but perfectly comfortable with gleaming new bathrooms, for little more than you’ll pay in a smart pub these days – and all the facilities of The Torridon are at your disposal. You can reset in the Stables or in a suite: it’s the people, and the setting that count.

BOOK IT:

Rooms and suites at The Torridon start at £235 per night. To find out more or book visit thetorridon.com. A berth on the Caledonian Sleeper Double cabins on the Caledonian Sleeper cost from £550. To find out more or book visit sleeper.scot.