Craigellachie House

Four bedrooms, three bathrooms and a sauna in the pines

Craigellachie House sits in the grounds at Pine Bank on Dalfaber Road, sharing the site with fifteen lodges, the smaller and larger of which have their own pages, and taking the groups none of them can. Eight people across four bedrooms, three bathrooms so nobody is queuing, and two separate sitting rooms, which is the detail that makes a house of this size work: one room can have the wood burner and the quiet, and the other can have the table tennis and the Sky.

The kitchen and dining room is the centre of it, with granite worktops, an induction range, underfloor heating and a table for eight, opening onto the garden. The garden is enclosed and safe for children and dogs with the gate shut, and has teak furniture and a Weber charcoal barbecue.

Then there is the sauna, which is a proper Finnish sauna room with its own wet room shower and colour-change lighting rather than a cabinet in a corner. After a day on the hill it is the reason people book this house twice.

Good to know

Features

Location

Where it puts you

Dalfaber is the quiet edge of Aviemore, with the golf course on one side and the Speyside Way running past. The village is a walk away for the shops, the pubs and the station.

The Cairngorms proper start about fifteen minutes up the ski road: Cairngorm Mountain for the snow and the plateau, Loch Morlich for the beach and the watersports, and the Rothiemurchus pinewoods and Loch an Eilein for the walk everybody remembers. With eight people and mixed weather, the useful ones to know are Landmark Forest Adventure Park at Carrbridge and the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, both of which work in rain.