Author Archive
Hospitality.
Over the last year information has gathered on the internet, from many sources but led and obviously encouraged by us in the name of marketing, which communicates the ethos, the aesthetics and the experience around Inshriach. There are films, photographs, articles and reviews, credits in magazines and album covers and listings with agencies all of which paint a picture, in their small ways, of the experience that can be found here. Really the only thing that you can’t do online these days is feel the beds. On the whole our guests do their research, arrive with their expectations and leave delighted and a year into the business we are settling into a cycle. Our latest party (experienced anglers) have booked for two weeks to catch both spring and autumn next year, they are among repeat bookings peppering the year and we are garnering a growing, varied and charming cross section of supporters.
On the flip side we had another group recently from whom we drew criticism from every angle despite our best efforts. My advice is this. If you take worn damask on a hundred year old sofa as a flaw and don’t see why we keep the original Edwardian carpets (however worn) or you don’t allow that occasionally an old house may ask of you a little patience or ingenuity, or realise that a bit of composting and some economy lightbulbs are probably the very least you should be doing these days, you may not see much magic here. There are plenty of other houses in Scotland you may prefer to choose (perhaps with lots of new furniture and a slightly taller aga).
I really recommend that anyone coming here reads this article in the Guardian, then looks at these pictures (or any others that those link to, feel free to rummage) and satisfies themselves that this is the place for them.
Attached above is a photo of Ed, a member of the group doing the double next year. He sent a selection of photos of their fishing here attached to an email which opened;
Walter,
Just wanted to say a huge thank you for last week.
We loved the house and all the fantastic meals cooked up by Allen. The fishing was the best river fishing we have done to date and we loved every moment of it. I am missing it already…
I guess you win some, you lose some, and thankfully we win most of the time.
Thunder in the Glens.
Once a year the various chapters of the Harley Owners clubs of Scotland descend on Aviemore for a weekend. Kilts, bagpipes, leather, sewn on patches, ponytails and big bikers everywhere. The town came to a standstill for half an hour this morning as the ride out took place, literally hundreds of bikes thundering up to Grantown, the smell of burnt petrol and bass boom of exhausts in the air, then back to Aviemore for rock covers and ale. The house is already booked for this week in 2010.
Going on the experience of people who stay here I have a couple of recommendations. A Belgian family came and went to the wildlife hide on Rothiemurchus where they put out food for the badgers and pinemartins and you can see owls, red deer and roe deer. They also went to the Rothiemurchus fishery and have promised me a photo they took of an Osprey taking a trout already hooked by a fisherman.
Both that party and the one here now (and others before) have employed the services of the chef Allan Heaney (One Pot Borrowed). He trained with Raymond Blanc and has been doing a superb job, not only making all the meals but baking bread with the guests in the afternoon and making the kitchen his own. I highly recommend him, he knows the area, the best local suppliers, and the kitchen is a scene of professional serenity when he is in it. He starts at £150 a day, more if he needs extra staff, but between 15 people that’s conspicuously good value, I wouldn’t go on holiday without him.
Yurt Building Course
Full details of the Yurt building course, September 4th to the 6th, are available here. Email [email protected] if you are interested.
The Ord Ban Insider Sessions.
Post Insider there is a new player in the Aviemore live music scene. Ord Ban brought the The John Langan Band and Woodenbox with a fistful of fivers to town and put on a great knees up in the restaurant with a strong local turn out, good food and ale and an excellent atmosphere. Here’s hoping they do it more often, it’s got to be good for Aviemore to have that sort of quality play here. During the afternoon Woodenbox came round to Inshriach and, in a bit of a break from our normal business, they recorded their next video by the river and a number of instruments met a sticky end, I have put some photos on our Flickr page.
Yurts and Strings.
Paul Millard from Red Kite Yurts came back last weekend, if ever there was a proficient camper he is it, arriving with a nest of Persian rugs and cushions and a gem of an 8ft yurt enveloped by burgundy canvas and beautiful oak spars. We came up with a few ideas. We are going to start by holding a workshop at Inshriach on 5th September covering the basics of yurt assembling, steam bending an oak crown and the spars, a bit of a history lesson, all probably washed down with an ale or two. The course will be £75 per person and anyone coming from further afield is welcome to pitch a tent. By next year we hope to have the necessary permissions to put three beautifully kitted yurts on Inshriach as an addition to the house rental. That will mean a compost loo, a camp kitchen and jobs for a few crafty individuals toward the end of this year…
Two weeks in a row I take my hat off to Linda Jolly and Carrbridge Arts, this time for The Dragon Strings ensemble at Loch Morlich. Not highbrow by any stretch but good clean fun, with this beautiful backdrop, and they went to the trouble of bringing a Cow Parade cow to stand in the loch.
Local and not so local news.
Two really entertaining things have happened in Aviemore recently. The soapbox race came down the ski road from the Cairngorms, only a little event this year, with around 26 teams driving everything from slick ecomonical little spaceframes to sheds, but there was good enthusiasm and sponsorship from an energy drink, GoFast, who gave me this picture because we (as Backwoods event bars and the Cairngorm brewery) were sat at the bottom and only saw the carts drift by the finishing line. Maybe next year, with some on track footage and a bit of entertainment at Glenmore it could be a good little event. It must be quite a rush that road.
I missed the market of Optimism put on by Carrbridge Arts and should have been there. I don’t seem to be able to pinch a picture from their flickr page so the only thing I can do is to point you to their website or to Fergus Thom’s excellent photos and let you draw your own conclusions. It looks like a lot of fun.
Only a small matter of 525 miles away I would like to congratulate everyone involved in Standon Calling, it’s a bit of a journey these days but you moved the game on again. A good few of the people who helped renovating Inshriach House or organising the Insider were involved, about half the people I know were there, probably most of the people who read this, and it was an absolutely excellent weekend if you like that sort of thing.
Poultry.
There has been an increase in the number of badgers roaming these parts and this has put the wind up our chickens. Two of them have taken to roosting in the postbox outside the kitchen window and are steadfastly refusing to return to the hen house. It’s convenient at breakfast time but if anyone gets dirty post from us that is the reason.
How apt that my hundredth post from Inshriach should be like this.
It’s a sign.
Matt Woodhouse recently made us this beautiful oak sign for the front gate in exchange for some B&B.
I can’t resist but post this lovely video of the Insider made by Adrianna Requina and Lars.
Petal.
6 months ago Captain Bob donated this big grey Landrover, known only as Petal, to the Inshriach cause. Post Insider she has new found aquatic responsibilities. We have taken a mooring on Loch Morlich for the boat and are starting to learn how to sail. Petal is also getting some work in on the BBC Scotland children’s show Raven that is filmed locally, often within a few miles of Inshriach. (I’m not supposed to take any photos on set or say anything much away about it here) This new role led to her getting totally stuck in the beautiful surroundings of Loch Laggan yesterday.
The Insider
Thank you all so much for an astonishing weekend. I have written a little more about it on the Insider site which we are going to turn into a gallery and in our new tradition of abstract artistry we also would like to make a film, for which we need your help. Any of you with good photos and especially good videos I would love to see them and I have set up a flickr group, Insider at Inshriach, which anyone can post to, or you could add them to the facebook group, we use Friends of Inshriach to tell people what we are up to and it’s slowly gathering friends.
May this be just the first of many, Backwoods productions are already plotting where to go from here.
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