Scottish Serenade - 6
Three of Scotland’s 282 Munros, mountain peaks above 914m, are on Knoydart Peninsula in Western Scotland. Also here is a self-planted memorial to a former Knoydart laird, the considerably hated Lord Brocket & Knoydart, 1904-67, a Nazi sympathiser who successfully legally brushed aside seven locals who claimed land ownership.
A two-hour morning ‘tour’ bumped us around to see all this in a Canadian-made BRP Can-Am. Kilchoan plans to lay its own road to make it easier to get to the top of the glen, where there is a tumble-down bothy, which has planning permission: from there, look down to the Black Loch below. Down again at ground level, 34 hens show free-range skills in and around old farm buildings. There are also 12 cows and one castrated bull.
The mist never lifted but one could see plantations where, grown from local seeds, alder, birch and rowan are being cultivated. Then there’s a break in the touring, for the clearly-labelled lunch the chef has parked in the fridge. Hearty sourdough sandwiches filled with ham, cheddar, pickle – and a side salad – are complemented by a wedge of Strathdon Blue, from Highland Fine Cheeses. There’s finally time to inspect ‘home’.
Eigg, named for one of the outlying islands, is a two-bedroomer, two-bathroomer, plus a 5x4m living room with kitchen extension - and an entry ‘mudroom’, home to racks for boot trees, different sizes of soft slippers, rolled cashmere rugs with leather hangers, Shoeshine and First Aid boxes, torches, re-usable water bottles, and six heavy-duty hooks, as well as hangers for outer clothing. Someone’s thought of everything. Under-floor heating comes up through local oak boards, or grey granite in the kitchen, or big, diagonal dark green and cream tiles in bathrooms. Paintwork is cream throughout. Interesting sloping ceilings support fascinating lights, origami white, or golden. Add a wood-burning stove and lots of highly puffed tweed upholstery, an all-grey tweed maxi-chair here, an all-cream tweed there, a sage green tweed over there, a basket of wood pellets and fire lighting instructions in a Victorian-look tin. There are ample please-use pashminas, and books on flowers, trees.
The kitchen’s dark grey marble-topped counters have everything easily seen and accessed. Six French cork-topped glass containers (Berag) hold different cereals, including the ultimate fruit and nut granola. There's a Lavazza A Modo Mio Jolie & Milk Evo coffee maker, a Dualit kettle, a can of Campbell’s teas, Churchill ceramics for four and glassware for six. The fridge has free-range eggs, superb cork-topped anonymous yoghurt jars, a glass bottle of milk, cold cuts, cheeses, and smoked salmon. Bosch hob, under Franke extractor fan, and Bosch fridge and freezer • Bathrooms have ample really thick towels, heated wall rails, glass-walled showers with easily-identifiable Noble Isle push-pump toiletries, and deep white tubs (black toilet seats invoke yesteryear). One bedroom has dark green highlights, the other’s more pale mushroom. Both have pairs of Christy’s white waffle robes hanging on sensible oak hooks. Both have marvellously comfortable fly-up-into beds with masses of pillows atop, and too-low bedside lights.
There are several glass jars of just-picked multi-coloured wild flowers, gathered probably by one of the managers who live on-site, or near-site, in an ‘interesting’ collection of wood shepherds’ huts and outbuildings, all apparently very comfortable inside. Chief deerstalker Iain, doyen of the gang, came here a couple of decades ago and apart from an annual pilgrimage to stalk deer outside Bariloches stays put. Cathy’s in charge of logistics and distribution. Carol, who’s temporarily left a young husband to run Mallaig’s lifeboat, is essentially hotel gm. Others, like professional musician Felix, one of whose jobs is hen honcho, are locals.
And then there’s the communal eatin’n’drinkin’ side, which all takes place in the splendid L-shaped Long House. The chef, Jamie, is a charmingly well-spoken English Millennial who switched from the Physics his very-English school, Sherborne, encouraged, to his passion, food. Here, he’s a one-man band, helped by a rotation of similarly upper-crust young commies, currently a lovely young lady (sorry, her name went in one ear and out the other). There’s also an extroverted Edinburgh-based Melburnian, Tina, who came to stop-gap front of house and stayed.
Daily-changing A5-printed menus are wine-paired. That night was salted sardine devilled egg, Bollinger Special Cuvée NV; langoustine, garlic butter and breadcrumbs, Granbazan Etiqueta Ambar Albarino; partridge, pancetta, leeks and aioli, Les Enracines Pur Beaujolais’ Apple tarte tatin. Haute cuisine’s genuine but not taken too seriously. Every iota quickly becomes a memory. Watch Kilchoan by Dunton become an iconic memory, up with other Dunton and the rest of the Henkel hostelries.
