Airds Hotel & Restaurant, Argyll
Airds Hotel
Welcome to this family owned and run Hotel, which is member of Relais and Chateaux. This country inn is situated in the small village of Port Appin surrounded by the majestic scenery of the West Coast of Scotland, an area renowned for its mountains, lochs and depth of history, and is a major stop on any Scottish Tour.
Spend your days visiting castles and gardens of Argyll or take a ferry trip to the local islands of Mull, Iona and Lismore. If you are feeling more energetic try some of the walks around the hotel or at nearby Glencoe. The hotel also offers private fishing and romantic hilltop picnics. In the evening relax and enjoy dining in the Airds Hotel's highly rated restaurant.
Owned by the Allen Family, this old ferry inn faces the northerly tip of Lismore - a long tongue of an island reaching the eastern shores of Mull at the mouth of the Loch. It was here that St Moluag established his church in the sixth century at the same time as Columba came to Iona. As you gaze out of your gabled bedroom window, or from your table in the dining room, the view is awesome. Beyond Lismore the mountains of Morvern rise out of the sea, creased and stubbled like an old man's face, clouds hanging around their folding brows, and as the evening light fades, the water turns slategray, a motionless strip beneath a vast black wilderness cast against a western sky etched in pink and orange.
The twelve bedrooms are furnished in stylish manner, and each one is different. Our room had a queen sized bed with matching chintz spread and curtains with pink, blue and green posies. Reading lights are bright, and, though the room was not large, there were two comfortable chairs and an antique dressing table. Some bathrooms at Airds are nearly as large as the bedrooms. Tubs are commodious, towels are fluffy, towel rails are heated, and there is a supply of fragrant soap and bath foam - in other words, all the niceties.
One of the secrets of Airds success is a consistency of performance in the kitchen and a messianic belief in the value of freshness and quality.
The interior of the white-stucco hotel is elegant without being 'done up' or pretentious. Guests enter through a glassed-in conservatory where begonias and geraniums bask in the sunshine and all the chairs face the garden and the loch. Two sitting rooms are cosily furnished in chintzes and patterned rugs.
Fires blaze and crackle all day long. Flowers are everywhere, bowls of primroses, rhododendrons and pale spider chrysanthemums add immeasurably to the feel of the place. On the walls a stunning series of gold framed prints depics kilted Highland hunters, with deer and game. Piles of books and magazines and a tall-case clock ticking away the minutes set a lazy scene.
Airds Hotel & Restaurant, Argyll
