Tartan, mounted antlers and sporrans aplenty give hearty Highland welcome
“You’ll need to go through the side entrance,” said a member of hotel staff as Pub Spy turned up in the foyer of the Atholl Arms Hotel at the top end of Perthshire.
True enough, the main door of this old place was not the way to access a pint, especially as it led through to a grand dining room where coach- loads of pensioners were enjoying their steak pie dinners.
Round the side of this Scots Baronia l bui lding there’s an entrance which takes dr inkers past a careful ly recreated depiction of an old Heilan’ bothy.
There’s a shawled mannequin looking on to a range, over which hang several pairs of old woollen socks and various items i llustrating a simpler way of life from the days of yore. The Radisson Sky Bar this ain’t.
It’s a curated excerpt f rom the nearby Country Life Museum and it’s the kind of thing tourists lap up in these parts in the pursuit of an authentic experience.
A t e am of English motor- cyclists were posing for photos as Pub Spy arrived, having ditched the campervan at the campsite across the road for the night.
Sitting right behind the railway station at Blair Atholl, the Bothy Bar is the kind of place some Scottish folk might cringe at, with its swathes of plaid, taxidermy, mounted antlers and paintings of old steam locomotives (the Duchess of Atholl, naturally).
What some might call cliched, others might call nostalgic and homely. There was even a gruff barman doing his bit for percept ions of Highland hospitality when we visited.
We called by midweek on a summer’s night – and dried off by the open fire. There would be no drinking of this place’s wide selection of locally brewed beers in the beer garden tonight, even if the rain was keeping the midges away.
The menu majors on standard Scottish fare – haggis, black pudding, mince and tatties, venison and something called a “sporran of plenty”, which you’d call a sirloin steak when ordering elsewhere.
Visitors can get a taste of the local ale with offerings from the Moulin Microbrewer y in Pitlochry.
One is cal led Braveheart, which tells its own story about who the target market might be. There are malts aplenty, too, and the Scottish artisan gin market also gets a good look-in.
The place was seasonably busy, with a fair few booths of American and Japanese tourists among the clientele warming in its cosy glow.
Dogs lay under tables, but all the other animals in the place were on the walls, their lives on the hills now given over to photo opportunities for tourists searching for Scotland in a Highland bar. Smile!