A relaxing place to live the wild life
George Angus believes all you need to sell your home is a dash of Mother Nature and a spot of Animal Magic. Certainly, there are spectacular views of the Cowal Peninsula.
To the front, his cutely-named Holly robin Lodge in St Catherine’s looks out across Loch Fyne to Inveraray Castle, ancestral home of the Dukes of Argyll for centuries.
But it’s the back of the house that brims with natural attractions so appealing that he decided to include them in the estate agent’s brochure advertising his property.
Put simply, he calls it his ‘private zoo’.
The sales document is full of foxes, packed with pine marten and positively dripping in pictures of gaily-coloured mandarin ducks.
‘The back of my house is so interesting I’ve stopped watching television,’ admitted Mr Angus, a retired Post office owner.
‘I just sit in the conservatory and gaze out at all my visitors. I get pine marten aplenty, red squirrel, deer, foxes and birds galore. There are heron, mandarin ducks and the great spotted woodpecker.’
It’s not as if the inside of the house doesn’t have attractions of its own. How many mid-market homes do you know that come complete with a swimming pool?
Mr Angus said it resulted from a previous owner becoming ‘bored’. It’s 26ft by 11ft and has been made to operate more economically by converting it from LPg to running off the property’s Biomass boiler. The cost of heating it is now less than £2,000 a year.
The layout of Holly robin Lodge opens up myriad possibilities for a new owner.
Set within two-thirds of an acre, the property has a reception hall, bay-windowed lounge, dining room, conservatory, three double bedrooms, kitchen and aforementioned pool room.
But there’s also a separate twobedroom, self-contained annexe, which could offer independent living for an older relative or teenager.
It could also serve as a holiday let in this picturesque part of the country, where tourists are very happy to part with hundreds of pounds a week for the right accommodation.
Mr Angus said his main house could also be used for the same purpose, where a weekly rent of £1,200 in high season would not be difficult to achieve.
It was the stunning local scenery which first attracted Mr Angus and his wife Angie to relocate here from the english Midlands four years ago.
They are now moving to Bute, where the couple love the deserted ettrick Bay, where there’s nothing for miles save a (very good) tea shop.
Meanwhile, a ‘wet and wild’ time awaits the new owners at their old home. That’s ‘wet’ in the swimming pool and ‘wild’ in the garden, of course.
Offers over £345,000 to Fiona Gumbrell of Slater Hogg and Howison. Tel 01436 671131 or email fiona.gumbrell@slaterhogg. co.uk