Shieldaig Lodge

Field-sports fans and whisky aficionados beat a path to this Victorian hunting lodge, in a ‘glorious location’ on a vast wooded estate by Loch Gairloch. Readers returning after a 38-year absence found much had changed – ‘for the better’, though they regretted that the fires were not lit. Refurbishment has been ‘expensively carried out, in a rather austere, masculine style’, with deep leather sofas and modern tartan and tweed furnishings. The lodge is a sister to the very different but similarly characterful Widbrook Grange, Bradford-on-Avon (see entry). Other readers praised the ‘friendly staff’, the ‘tasteful decoration’ and the ‘first-class comfort’. Some bedrooms have a loch view; a suite has a bay window, a hand-carved four-poster, a roll-top bath on a plinth. Jerome Prodanu’s three-course, three-choice menus use estate and home-grown produce to create ‘delicious food’ such as pan-seared pheasant breast with fondant potato and celeriac. Guests shelling out for a shellfish gastro experience board a creel boat for a tour of the bay, returning with the day’s catch to be served up as a feast. (Pauline and David Waterhouse, BW)