Outfield Farm - The Sheiling

Woodland, height, and a bathroom you walk outside to

The Sheiling is the highest of the three cabins at Outfield Farm and the only one where the bathroom is a building in its own right. It stands as a mirrored box beside the cabin, reflecting the trees back at itself, and holds a shower heated by propane along with a flushing lavatory. That either sells the place to you or rules it out, so it is worth knowing before you book rather than on the first cold morning.

The cabin is square and clad in larch on both faces of the wall, under a red roof that shows through the branches on the drive up. Outfield calls it their most alpine, and the inside carries that: a wood-burning stove, sheepskin armchairs big enough to disappear into, and corner windows that put the canopy at eye level with the Tay in the distance beyond it.

Mature woodland is what you get here instead of open ground. Buzzards, pheasants, red squirrels and roe deer are the regulars. If you would rather have water below you, Bothan Dubh sits above a pond further down the farm, and Whin faces out over open hillside rather than into trees.

The three cabins

Good to know

Features

Location

Where it puts you

Sitting at 675 feet above the Tay tends to make people want more of the same, and the answer is Kinnoull Hill, the wooded scarp on the eastern edge of Perth with a folly on the cliff and the river bending below it. There are forestry trails within ten minutes of the farm by car, and paths across the farm itself with viewing platforms along them.

Perth is the natural base for a day off the hill, and our two day guide to Perth covers what to do with one. Dundee airport is twenty minutes away and Edinburgh a little over an hour.