Scottish Serenade - 4
The Fife Arms’ amazing art is carefully explained in an impressive tome, The Fife Arms, by Dominic Bradbury. The fuchsia-highlighted Art Deco cocktail bar, above, is Elsa’s. It’s named for Salvador Dali’s great friend, Elsa Schiaparelli, 1890-1973, and wall art includes four Man Ray images of her. There’s always a signature fuchsia pink cocktail, which changes on a mixologist’s mood.
What’s it like staying in this 36-key justly-renowned art gallery that thinks it’s a hotel? The Duke of Fife Suite is two similar-shaped rooms, separated by a foyer and bathroom. Come in through the main door, turn right from the foyer into the sitting room. The walls, right up to the ceiling, are green with gold paper bearing heavy gold-framed, country pastoral scenes. There’s Taittinger on ice, and minis of Scotch and organic dry gin, ice in the ice bucket, a box of four different chocolates (all the edibles and potables are complimentary, and they're local). There are a pair of 36g Drinks Biscuits from The Drinks Bakery, Edinburgh; a small bar of milk chocolate, Braemar Chocolate Shop; Caramel milk chocolate wafers from T Tunnock Ltd, Uddington; Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier, Pitlochry, and hotel-made all-butter shortbreads. A string-tied pack holds a hotel notebook and some brown-on-white postcards.
When you look into the 3m-long bathroom, the immediate reaction is wow. It's a traditional look, apart from glass-walled shower immediately on your left. Look over the marble woven-look floor - so associated with Victoriana - to a copper tub with stainless interior, above which is a 1.5-meter-high black and white photo of the Duke of Fife in about 1910, with someone, one presumes his Duchess, hanging on to his arms for love, hopefully, and money, undoubtedly. The wallpaper here is soft grey and white overall pattern: the right-hand wall is old prints, 18th-century portraits. The left-hand wall has a double sink, sconce lights, wooden-seated toilet with pull-handle flush, and local toiletries in push pots. The tissue box is covered in Fife Arms tartan. There's a pull-out magnifying mirror.
The bedroom is dominated by the heaviest-imaginable wooden Elizabethan-look structure, its carved wood headboard - going up to the picture rail – as sturdy as the foot posts the bed top, all similarly carved dark wood (the throw’s Fife Arms tartan). The telephone is a circular dial, proper receiver, old-fashioned look, but it works.
There’s so much to do here. At 4pm, the daily 45-minute public areas’ art tour, led by one of the young staff members, in rotation, must not be missed – Ceres, doing it today, is so passionate, as well as knowledgeable. This is conveniently timed to be followed by a 5pm whisky tasting in Bertie’s but Girlahead had actually opted, instead, for a therapeutic massage: the two-room spa, directed by Jo, is a relatively recent addition, part of a stylish rabbit warren of additional areas at the rear of the hotel.
The spa’s an obviously popular recovery after exploring the immediate area. Within five minutes’ walk there are at least half a dozen really commendable stores, including Horn Shop, Local Souvenirs, and Braemar Mountain Sports, one of several proudly displaying the Royal Warrant (The King’s Scottish home, Balmoral, is ten miles away). There’s also a really good, and well-displayed, merchandise store in a front room of the hotel.
After a fuchsia-something in Elsa’s it was dinner, in the adjacent Clunie dining room. As well as art-walls with art on top, Angus, a giant stuffed stag, is a talking point. That night this taxidermist delight was facing out of the window to look up the valley but he is moved, apparently, sometimes relocated completely if there's a big event. First week of September sees the Braemar Gathering, one of the biggest Highland Games on the annual calendar, and attended by both the King and Queen. This year a 5th September bonanza preceded Highland Games all day on the morrow with a barbecue buffet that evening (and drinks apparently flowing all legal hours): one of the 2026 fringe highlights was the latest Barbour x Paul Smith collaboration, bright stripes on waterproof jackets. This very weekend The Braemar Literary Festival stars such authors as His Majesty’s stepson, food writer Tom Parker Bowles.
Ah food. Clunie has a simply good menu concept. No set meals. You choose what you want. A favourite starter is Black Angus beef tartare with late harvest olive oil, game chips, Yurita anchovy: a circular milk bread loaf rises up out of a round patty pan, already pre-divided into six. Main course was loin of Invercauld Estate red deer, snow crown cauliflower purée, a single girolle, Colbeggie bramble sauce,and a side of superb mash. It was a delight to emerge to postprandial music. The highly decorated piano – pianola - in the main lobby plays itself.
Ah what a good night’s sleep does. Girlahead had the ‘fitness pod’ – see photo, for the hour-long slot from 6.30am. It’s a clever idea. No room for a gym? Buy a pod, a half-container equipped with weights, immersive video training and an arm-exercise ski machine. Fife Arms has plonked its pod 300 metres from the hotel and staff and villagers can also book it. Then, with time running out, it was rush back to Clunie, breakfast, and the opportunity to look at the Brueghel on the wall. There's a buffet set up at the far end near the open kitchen, not now working - the buffet is copious enough that you don't need the included hot dishes, say warm Aberdeenshire butteries; Scottish pinhead porridge with raspberry jam, roasted hazelnut; Arbroath smokies; smoked haddock with scrambled egg, and Isle of Mull cheddar - or Katy's eggs, two boiled eggs with sourdough soldiers (not finished yet, eggs Benedict Fife Arms way comes with smoked ham hock, poached eggs, hollandaise, and toasted English muffin – or a Ghillie's breakfastis eggs cooked your way, smoked bacon, sausage, haggis, Stornoway black pudding, tattie scone, field mushroom, baked beans, and grilled tomatoes). Whew, anyway Girlahead revelled in excellent Rora Greek yogurt, granola, strawberries and excellent coffee. And then it was time to say goodbye.
