Forss House

The Forss river curves around the wooded grounds of this late Georgian country house, run today as a ‘wonderful hotel’ with salmon fishing at the bottom of the garden. It is ‘Scottish country house living on a grand scale – faded elegance but with modern fittings’, writes a reader. Public rooms are a sea of tartan carpet. Main-house bedrooms, with a newly refurbished bathroom, are traditional in style, with antique pieces. The two largest bedrooms are named after renowned hunter and falconer Major Radclyffe, who, in 1930, built the crenellated extension to display his trophies. There are also dog-friendly rooms with garden access in the annexes. In a dining room hung with portraits of bewigged men, a locally sourced dinner might bring lamb rump and flank, polenta, mint and jus; orzo with spring onions and white truffle oil; Scrabster-landed fish. At breakfast there is porridge, smoked haddock, the full Forss with ‘very nice local bacon and sausages, tasty mushrooms’, free-range eggs. The coast is but a short drive: if you want to go far north from here, it will have to be by ferry from Scrabster to Orkney and Shetland.