Denend Farmhouse

The one you book when the whole group is coming

Boutique Farm Bothies is Jane's business on her family's farm at Newton of Begshill, and it started in 2014 with a single bothy for two on the edge of a barley field. Denend Farmhouse is the one she added for everybody else: four bedrooms, eight beds, and a downstairs laid out so cooking, eating, and sitting by the stove happen in the same room.

The colour is the point of the place. Patterns and fabrics are mixed hard rather than matched, and the ground floor en suite has a copper roll top bath and a high cistern loo in orange. There is a separate shower room upstairs and another loo in the utility room, which is what eight people need on a wet morning.

Outside is where the farm shows. The kitchen opens onto a raised deck with the fields beyond it, and everything out there burns wood: the hot tub, the pizza oven, and the grill.

The bedrooms

Good to know

Features

Location

Where it puts you

Drumblade sits inland from the Moray Firth and north west of Aberdeen, on the quiet farmland between Huntly and Inverurie. The owners put a hill walk up Bennachie within half an hour's drive, and point guests west to the Malt Whisky Trail, north to the Moray Firth coast for surfing, and south into the hills.

For winter that means the Lecht, and for a summer day the mountain biking at Glenlivet and Tarland. This is a corner of Aberdeenshire most visitors drive through on the way to Speyside, which is much of its appeal.