‘A beautiful location, lovely gardens, good food and friendly service – and a view from our room that was probably the best we have ever enjoyed.’ The MacRobert family’s ‘wonderful’ hotel on the outer reaches of the Cairngorms national park was much praised by Guide readers this year. The family home since the 1880s, it has been ‘extensively and beautifully’ refurbished. There is a newly designed ‘conservatory’ restaurant this year. The graceful furnishings and low armchairs by the grand piano are also new; the antiques, silverware, ceramics and an extensive library are heirlooms. Open fires keep out the Scottish chill until warm days, when the terrace doors are flung wide open, allowing drinks with ‘sweeping views’ of the Grampians. Classic bedrooms with natural tones and the odd bit of tartan look across the Aberdeenshire countryside from the main house. On the estate, apartments and cottages (several recently renovated) have a kitchenette. At lunch and dinner chef David Butters’s ‘excellent, inventive’ Scottish menus exploit the walled garden for such dishes as halibut fillet, braised oxtail, carrot and anise, baby gem, citrus beurre blanc. For breakfast, ‘smoked haddock, two poached eggs and a wonderful hollandaise sauce; good coffee’. (Philip Bright, and others)