Perfect for the family

The Isles of Glencoe is the perfect base for exploring some of Scotland's most impressive and intimidating regions. Dominic Roskrow reports

It's not the smartest hotel in the world, or the most stylish. Indeed, by the end of a hard tourist season it looks a little battered and frazzled at the edges. For all that, though, the family hotel Isles of Glencoe is charming, friendly, welcoming – and the ideal family launch pad for exploring the broody area it is based in and the beautiful lochs it lies close to.

The Isles of Glencoe specialises in family stays, providing rooms with children's dens: an area set apart with bunk beds and a television so that the children can have their space while the parents enjoy a drink while overlooking the scenic views across the loch on which the hotel is sited.

Each day the local ranger comes in to the hotel to answer questions and to provide information on the myriad of activities such as cycling, walking, golf, sailing and, for the more adventurous, ‘rib riding'; speeding across the loch in a motorised dinghy.

The hotel itself has a leisure centre with swimming pool, sauna, Jacuzzi and steam room, and a range of beauty treatments are available. All lovely at the end of the day, perhaps, but the hotel's main advantage is location and the opportunity it provides to explore Glencoe itself and as far afield as the legendary Loch Ness.

The hotel takes its name from the small islands littered across the loch itself– the burial place for generations of Macdonalds. And that fact, coupled by the disturbing and tragic history of Glencoe itself, make for an intensely atmospheric an...

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• By : Dominic Roskrow
• In : Best of Scotland
• Issue : 18
• Page : 50
• Words : 682