Arbikie OOD Houses

Mirror cabins on a working distillery estate

The ÖÖD houses at Arbikie are single-room cabins faced in one-way mirrored glass, which means that from outside they largely disappear into the barley and from inside you look out at Lunan Bay through a wall of window with nobody able to look back. There are eight of them, spread across the estate so none overlooks another.

Every cabin sleeps two and has the same interior: a king bed, underfloor heating, a kitchenette with a hob, kettle, toaster and Nespresso machine, and a modern shower room. What differs between them is the setting and whether the private thing outside is a sauna or a wood-fired hot tub.

The distillery is the reason this is more than a design cabin with a view. Arbikie grows, distils and bottles on the estate, which very few Scottish distilleries can say, and the tours, tastings, cocktail sessions and the café bar are a walk from the door rather than a drive and a taxi home.

Good to know

Features

Location

The eight cabins

All eight have the same inside: king bed, underfloor heating, floor-to-ceiling mirrored glass, kitchenette and shower room.

Where it puts you

Lunan Bay is five minutes down the hill, two miles of sand between red sandstone cliffs with the ruin of Red Castle above it, and it is quiet even in August. Montrose Basin, ten minutes north, is a tidal estuary reserve that takes tens of thousands of migrating geese in autumn.

Arbroath is fifteen minutes south for the abbey and the smokies, and Dundee with the V&A is about forty. This is the least travelled stretch of the Angus coast and the better for it.