The Lazy Duck

Three off-grid cabins in Abernethy Forest

The Lazy Duck is three cabins in the middle of one of the largest surviving Caledonian pinewoods in Britain, a few minutes outside Nethy Bridge. Each one sleeps two, each has a wood-burning stove, and they sit far enough apart that you rarely see the others.

What separates them is how far off-grid you want to go. The Woodman's Hut has no mains power and no wifi at all, and cools its food in a stream. The Homestead has both. The Duck's Nest sits in between, beside a woodland pond. The owners are clear that this is not polished luxury, and the site is better for it.

Two things on the site are worth knowing about before you book. Toast is a hand-built electric sauna down by the burn with a cold bucket beside it, bookable for ninety minutes. Breathing Space is a studio kept for quiet: guests use it for meditation or birdwatching, and Anna, who runs it, offers massage treatments there.

Good to know

Features

Location

The three cabins

The Woodman's Hut

The most stripped back of the three, and the one people book for the disconnection rather than in spite of it. Solar lighting, USB charging, a wood burner, an outdoor bush shower and a compost loo. Food is kept cold in a fridge cooled by the stream running past it. It sits on a small rise with the Cairngorms in view.

The Duck's Nest

The prettiest position on the site, on a veranda over the pond, with a Hebridean-style box bed inside and a wood burner. There is some electricity and wifi, and the shower is an outdoor bucket. Mornings here are the reason people come back.

The Homestead

The gentlest introduction. Electricity, wifi, a wood burner, a hammock, and a veranda looking over the meadow and into the trees. It sits at the heart of the site, so it feels the most connected of the three.

Wildlife and the forest

You walk out of the cabin into Abernethy Forest, which means red squirrels, roe deer, crossbills and woodpeckers without getting in a car. Nethy Bridge is five minutes away and has a shop and a farm shop, and there is a small grocer on the site itself. Aviemore, with everything else, is about fifteen minutes.

There is a good deal more walking within half an hour, and the Cairngorms and Aviemore pages cover it properly, from Loch an Eilein to the green lochan at Ryvoan.