Great North Lodges - Laggandhu

Three miles past the village, and the hot tub burns wood

Laggandhu is not in Nethy Bridge. It is three miles out of it on the Dorback Estate, surrounded by old woodland and rising ground, and that distance is the whole proposition. Nothing here is a short walk. What you get for that is a cottage with no neighbour in the frame.

The hot tub is wood-fired, which is a different thing from the kind you switch on. It sits on a raised deck looking out at the Cairngorm range, and it has to be lit and brought up to heat, so a soak is something you decide on in the afternoon rather than at eleven at night. The garden it stands in is open woodland edge, and the owners say to expect red squirrels and roe deer.

Indoors, a boot room takes the wet gear first. The kitchen and dining room are one space under exposed timber beams with a tiled wood-burning stove, and the sitting room has a second wood burner of its own.

The bedrooms

Three bedrooms hold six. Two are upstairs, a superking and a twin, sharing a shower room. The third is on the ground floor and is why the owners call the cottage comfortable for guests with limited mobility: it is large, on the level, and opens into the downstairs bathroom, which is arranged Jack and Jill and can also be reached from the hall.

The three lodges compared

Good to know

Features

Location

Where it puts you

Nethy Bridge is three miles off and Aviemore sixteen, which puts Laggandhu on the quiet edge of the Cairngorms rather than in the middle of the traffic. Everything is a drive, and the trade is a garden where the wildlife turns up on its own.

Winter is when the cottage makes most sense: two wood burners, a hot tub you feed with logs, and the snow at Cairngorm Mountain within reach for the day. Of the three lodges here it asks least of you once you have arrived, which is the opposite of Smithy Croft in Carrbridge, where the village and the play park are the point.