Fired up with festive energy
Glorious grounds, fine food and ‘four-poster sex appeal’ will add pizzazz to a yule escape, says Mark C O’Flaherty
Inever want to be away from home at Christmas because I love the indolence of my house, tree and pyjamas during the last week of the year – but if I had an extended family I liked enough to holiday with, I’d be in full support of relocating to Glenapp Castle. Its festive energy is overwhelming. Built in the late 19th century as a Scottish baronial mansion by Edinburgh architect David Bryce for a society family of the day, it is now a Relais & Châteaux property with a preposterously long driveway and lots of overstuffed armchairs in libraries where the cushions are karate-chopped daily, to give a graphic impression of fervent housekeeping and luxury.
Like having your loo roll folded as if origami, fancy cushion arrangements are a crucial detail in places like this. When I was there last week, they were readying to decorate for the season, and everything felt like It’s a Wonderful Life. But without the narrative of debt and monochrome notions of ending it all. It is actually more… Love Actually.
If you were taking the family you liked, or an urban clique that you liked even more, you would do well to book the Endeavour, which is a new addition to the hotel – the top floor of the castle has been turned into a rambling multi-floor penthouse (from £2,750 per night), with four bedrooms, spiral staircases, slanted ceilings, a sauna, lounges galore and a giant television mounted on a wall in the guise of a fancy gilt-framed mirror. You can have a private chef, and host dinner for 16 people. There is also a terrace that
overlooks the grounds and the architectural fancies of the castle’s roofing.
I loved the curved walls and doors of the bathroom off the master bedroom, as well as the borderline-tacky maritime theme of one of the other bedrooms – the Waverley – with trompe-l’oeil wallpaper to make it look like a below-deck cabin with wood panelling. The penthouse aside, I have also stayed at Glenapp in one of its Master Suites (from £575 per night), which have outlandishly lavish fourposter sex appeal and make for a raunchier Bridgerton option for a couple than the penthouse would. If you are doing luxury à deux, do it in one room, I say.
I’ve been to so many historic houses turned into luxury hotels that feel dusty and gloaming, but Glenapp feels classic and polished. If you like William Morris arts-and-crafts prints – which I do – you will love it. The service is modern and friendly (thank you to all European hospitality staff who have stayed in the UK!), although there are quite a lot of interruptions at breakfast from waitrons who want to know how it’s all going for you, and what your plans are for the day. I have never much liked conversation in the morning, even with someone I’ve spent the night with, so I really don’t want small talk from someone in a silk waistcoat over my cold cuts, cheese, rare breed sausage and latte.
Glenapp is about fine dining: six courses of lush grub, after nibbles served with cocktails in the Dowager Countess milieu of one of the lounges, or the library. I disliked nothing, although it’s not particularly contemporary. But like rolling around in a four-poster bed, it is not for every day. They have also turned their behemoth of a greenhouse in the gardens into a more casual dining space, which feels pleasingly Pig-like. You will eat well at the castle.
The loveliest thing about Glenapp are those gardens and grounds. They have also engineered ways for you to do more than just stroll around with a map of the river. They can book you an afternoon with the magnetic personality that is Monica Wilde – a herbalist and forager who has spent the past year with her partner living solely on wild produce; foraging and trading her expertise in botanical therapy for meat from a local huntsman. Monica walked me around the autumnal grounds of Glenapp – some of it mildly perilous to a Londoner without country footwear – and we foraged mushrooms for hours. It was late in the season for shrooms, but we filled a basket with the most amazingly psychedelic coloured varieties of fungi, all edible, and much of it then cooked by the chef that night for my dinner
As someone whose diet is largely durum wheat that has been bronze-cut in Italy before being boiled in Hackney, smothered in butter and grated parmesan, it was a revelation to appreciate just how much you can get from the land around you if you look for it, unprocessed and raw.
Rooms from £275 including breakfast. There are 10 accessible rooms. Avanti Trains (avantiwestcoast.co.uk) offers single fares from London to Glasgow from £27