The best thing about celebrating my 80th was just getting away from everyone ✒️ PrueLeith writes for ipaperviews
Far from spartan rooms and a loo at the end of the corridor, Marionburgh House had ensuite bathrooms, a first-class chef who gave us the works for breakfast, delicious picnics by the river for lunch and excellent dinners. And twice we had dinner at Ballindalloch Castle which is a fairy-tale affair, complete with turrets and towers, magnificent halls, family portraits and buckets of history.
The cabins are a design triumph. Somehow, in a space no more than two by two-and-a-half metres there is a bunk bed for two at eye-level, a shelf under it for your luggage and kit, bedside lights that shine on your book a mini shelf for your bedside water bottle, phone and book, and a few clothes hooks. I loved it, it was like playing house as a child, organising things all neat and tidy.
So, all in all, a wonderfully peaceful fortnight. I’m not sure there is anything more soul-satisfying than standing in a salmon river watching a heron watching the water. Or lying on a sunny bank reading a book while the ghillie takes your rod and shows you what an effortlessly good Spey-cast looks like. Or sitting on the Puffer, glass in hand, watching the world drift by.