A Dell of a partridge day
Testing birds explode over the hills at this Highland estate. Keith Allan reports
This Highland estate bordering Loch Ness offers sporting heaven,
as Keith Allan discovered. Photographs by Simon Jauncey
When essex farmer Jeremy Finnis first set eyes on the 7,000-acre Dell estate in the highlands, he could have been forgiven for walking away. neglected and run-down, a million things needed doing – first of which was to make the estate accessible, turning gut-wrenching tracks fit only for Argocats into roadways that would accommodate four-wheel drives.
even so, Finnis and his wife, Diana, sensed it was a far from hopeless case. And, by now, a bit of fairy dust had fallen, much as it did on those early Victorian sportsmen who boldly set off north for somewhere to shoot and found themselves so smitten with their surroundings that they either built or bought a lodge to turn into a cherished home.
how could they resist the classic proportions of the not-too-large Georgian house that greeted them at the end of the driveway? The way the estate had seeped into the landscape, with Loch ness as the backdrop? Throw in the staggering views, 13 hill lochs full of wild brown trout (and one with Arctic char) and a feeling that this place was crying out for help and it was becoming increasingly difficult to resist. Their sons, Toby and Ollie (now close to being crack shots), and daughter, Kathryn, were keen, too. It was high time the old man got his chequebook out and snapped the whole thing up. So he did just that and now, a decade later, Dell has been transformed.
On a balmy, late October morning over a hearty breakfast of porridge, poached eggs, black pudding and crispy bacon at the
Whitebridge Hotel, I can’t help thinking about another Dell: Charles Dickens’ Dingley Dell. Mr Pickwick had sat down with his companions, Tracy Tupman, Nathaniel Winkle and Augustus Snodgrass, to an equally delicious breakfast and began making plans for an equestrian journey to Dingley Dell. The Pickwickians had been invited by the country squire of Manor Farm to take part in a spot of hunting, card playing and story telling, not to mention a bit of flirting, while enjoying sumptuous dinners in front of a blazing inglenook fire. It turned out to be a riotous expedition. More than 150 years later, that formula for a successful country-house party more or less remains in place, minus, on this occasion, the horsey shenanigans.
This particular Dell day is a family one with a few friends: John Abiston; Andrew Collins; Jeremy Finnis; Toby and Ollie Finnis (sharing); George Goldsmith; Tom and Lucy Hewiston (sharing); Tom Merrill; Max Pywell; Will Travis; and Ed Watson. All are immaculately turned out in tweed jackets and plusfours. Over morning coffee in the drawing room, Finnis fills me in. “Half the estate lies beside Loch Ness and the middle of the loch is our northern boundary,” he tells me. “We’ve got five salmon boat permits and specimen rainbows in one of the lochs. Our high ground runs into the Monadhliath Mountains right up to 2,700 feet. That means we’ve got excellent walked-up grouse and red deer-stalking; sika and roe populations are building nicely, too.”
As part of the ongoing investment at Dell, Finnis is keen to tell me about his award-winning wood, a 600-acre mixed plantation. “Getting on for half-a-million trees have been planted and it’s been designed to encourage the 20-odd pairs of black grouse and it’ll give extra winter shelter for the deer.”
He also puts down 11,000 or so partridges and the result is one of the best partridge shoots in Scotland. Together with head keeper Colin Barclay, they spotted the potential of the terrain: bracken banks and long gullies, ideal for cover; 300-foot cliffs with rocky slopes for the birds to sunbathe on. The partridges pour off these hills although, inevitably, a few contour into the comfort of the scrub and rocks, balking at the prospect of flying any further.
Redlegs like to leg it and have a reputation for being stubborn and unwilling to take to the air, unlike their grey cousins. But these Dell Frenchies mostly play ball and press on, high
steady, some curling and dipping, at the first, Fifty Acre drive. While many get off scotfree, plenty tumble. There are high pheasants, too, and out of the blue the quacks of mallard, spooked from a nearby pond. They come in from behind, easy enough at first but they keep returning at a better height that strains the eye and arches the back. Duck bring an extra dimension to a drive, wild and more wily than a reared bird. “The big ducks with the green heads,” Hemingway called them and a few thump down close to our feet.
We take a break and stroll back to the caravan of Land Rovers parked nearby. Everyone’s happy and the pickers-up, using a selection of labradors, spaniels and German pointers, pick the last of the fallen birds. A sip of sloe gin (some have it topped up with champagne, a “sloegasm”) and a pincer movement to our right gets us in line again. This is the Fifty Acre Return. “Expect only partridges this time,” Finnis informs us. A few of the guns go up a birch gully, glowing in the autumn sunshine, and one or two more are positioned in gaps among the trees; a bit of snap-shooting on offer here for Ollie, with Dad standing behind as a back gun. It’s so warm we might be on the Riviera with a glass of wine and plate of scampi fritti but it’s too early for lunch. Those tubby little birds are flying at us like bullets again.
Next to me George Goldsmith, armed with an AYA, is wiping the eye of one or two fellow guns. His little brown cocker spaniel has many opportunities to please her master. Goldsmith has a particular connection with Dell. Not only does he help Finnis market the estate but his family hail from these parts and it’s where he learned to fish for trout as a boy.
On our way to Kinmonavie, known as the Nessie drive, we get our first bird’s-eye view of Loch Ness. It has turned Mediterranean blue and is shimmering in the sunlight. From up high it looks like a voe that has been cut into the mountains. “This is the deepest part of the loch,” Finnis informs us, “and Nessie is a regular sight near the beaches at Dell but we like to keep it quiet.”
We drop down into the trees and the long bracken and wait for the beaters to bring the birds from these sunny hillsides towards us. Once more they come at us in steady little packs, weaving through the trees, and the guns are loving it. To be a reporter on such a golden day is a joy. Sunglasses are handy and a hand held high is necessary to shield the eyes. The guns cope well, however, and another successful drive is over.
It’s time to break for lunch and we drive to yet another stunning facet of Dell. Finnis has spent real money on this place and our lunch hut (or, rather, Swiss chalet) speaks volumes about his commitment to the estate. We are on the edge of Loch Kemp and you could happily bring a camp bed here and live on the wild trout that are rising like billy-o from the glassy water. Scrumptious sandwiches are passed around and I choose to wash them down with another glass of “sloegasm”, which I have become rather fond of.
Two brand new boats with oars at the ready are beached on the shore of the loch. It
‘Nessie is a regular sight near the beaches at Dell but we like to keep it quiet’
wouldn’t take much effort to launch one and I could have a dozen fat brown trout in the bag, caught on a favourite fly. But that’s the champagne talking. Instead, I chat to Lucy Hewitson, who, aged just 13, is the youngest gun by far. She is taking it in turn with her dad to tumble these whirring partridges out of the sky and, rather amazingly, she is using a .410 to do it.
But that’s only half the story. I stand with Lucy’s mother, Jo, on the final drive. We are in a valley with a stream running at our feet; Lucy and her father are a few yards away. “Lucy has had a terrible back problem,” Jo whispers to me. “Just over a year ago she was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, and she faced two years of being locked into a permanent back brace and then an operation called spinal fusion, which uses metal rods to help straighten the spine.”
It sounded horrific, so Jo Hewitson trawled the internet to see if there was anything else out there. There was, in New York, a pioneering treatment called spinal tethering that corrects the curve of the spine and allows incredible flexibility. For Jo, it was a no brainer. The operation was a huge success.
The bag of 222 partridges, 35 pheasants and 10 duck was made particularly memorable by a beautiful young lady who not only contributed to it in a remarkable way but also has a new future, not least as a potential top gun in the shooting field.