Save this story Save Story Save this story Even if you have never set foot in Scotland, there is a good chance you already know the chorus to “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.” The wistful 18th-century folk ballad—all about taking the high road or the low road back to the country’s largest and arguably most romantic expanse of water—has cropped up everywhere from The Simpsons to, well, every Scottish wedding on earth.
But for the millions of travelers who actually make the pilgrimage up the A82 highway from Glasgow each year, the experience of those famous shores is often reduced to a fleeting blur of slate-blue water through a car window as they head deeper into the Highlands. Even for those who do pull over in Luss—an almost absurdly pretty conservation village of climbing rose-covered sandstone cottages and slate roofs on the loch’s western shore—it has historically been for a quick stroll down the pier (and maybe an ice cream) before getting right back on the road.
Photo: Getty Images Yet when I arrived in Luss on a gloriously sunny weekend in late summer, the village was in peak form, filled with hikers in boots and day-trippers clutching coffees and ambling down the winding lanes toward the glittering water. And as I pulled up to the newly reopened Loch Lomond Arms , I spotted a steady stream of curious locals popping their heads through its antler-crowned yellow door. Set inside a 17th-century former coaching inn at the heart of this tiny community of just 120 residents, the property has long been a beloved local watering hole. And now, following a whirlwind six-month transformation, it’s been reborn as one of Scotland’s most characterful new stays.
Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms The mastermind behind this reinvention is Patrick Colquhoun—son of the current chief of Clan Colquhoun (pronounced ka-hoon , for the uninitiated), the family that has held the surrounding 45,000-acre Luss Estate for more than 800 years—who enlisted the celebrated British interior designer Russell Sage to help breathe new life into the building. Sage is no stranger to high-end Scottish hospitality, having previously conjured the maximalist wonderland of The Fife Arms in Braemar, the whimsical, art-stuffed Victorian hotel backed by mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth.
Here, though, the brief was intentionally more modest. “I said right from the outset, it’s a coaching inn and it’s a pub—we’re not trying to be a five-star hotel,” Sage tells me. Colquhoun felt similarly, noting that while Scotland has seen plenty of big-budget luxury openings over the past decade, he wanted “an inn where the design, the food, and the welcome are taken as seriously as they would be in a grand hotel, but where you can still find yourself mixing with local residents.”
Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms That sense of laid-back, unpretentious warmth was evident the moment I crossed the threshold. There is no formal reception desk; instead, I was greeted like an old pal by a member of the affable, mostly local team decked out in butterscotch yellow waistcoats, and ushered into the Map Room, a snug where pink velvet chairs and sturdy antique tables sit beneath a ceiling papered entirely in vintage hand-drawn charts inherited from Colquhoun’s grandfather. After a marathon journey involving three connecting flights to reach Glasgow—and coming off the back of a particularly hectic week that had left me feeling a little under the weather—the lack of fuss was firmly appreciated. Better still was what awaited upstairs when I was led to my bedroom: a golden dram of Scotch whisky and a plate of crumbly cheese straws laid out on a side table. I snacked on a straw and opened my window, plunking myself down onto the super-king four-poster bed to let the loch-side air work its magic. (By which I mean: I fell into a coma-like stupor.)
Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms After rousing myself for a wander around, I discovered there are no room numbers at the Loch Lomond Arms. Instead, each of the 15 bedrooms (which start at a remarkably reasonable rate, given the pedigree) is named after an eccentric figure or episode from the Colquhoun family history, brought to life after Sage and his team were let loose on eight centuries of archives, attics, and outbuildings. “Fifteen rooms turns out to be about the right number,” Colquhoun jokes. “If we had 30 we might have run out of colorful relatives!”
Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms I was ensconced in The Wallabies, an ocean-blue suite layered with tartan and curiosities that looks out over the rooftops of the village. Its name pays tribute to Patrick’s great-aunt, Fiona Colquhoun—later the Countess of Arran—who in the 1940s famously packed a mob of red-necked wallabies into the back of her E-Type Jaguar and released them onto the nearby island of Inchconnachan, where a wild colony still hops around to this day. (In a delightful touch, if I wanted my sheets changed, I simply had to leave the stuffed toy wallaby provided on the bed.)
On a subsequent tour of the property, every corner of the inn seemed to burst with history. Rather than purchasing new furniture, Sage’s team stripped, restored, and hand-painted heirloom pieces pulled straight from the family’s cupboards and drawers. “The idea of getting people engaged with a place through telling its stories is really important to me,” Sage explained. You can see it in the hallway’s stuffed lion, a nod to Patrick’s great-grandfather Sir Iain, who casually took a pet lion cub with him to the trenches during World War I (and was later court-martialed for keeping a written account of the 1914 Christmas truce). Or in Nova Scotia Love Potion, a russet-walled room tucked into the eaves with cabinetry hand-painted by artist Lizzie Bentley, dedicated to a 16th-century ancestor dubbed “the last witch in Scotland” after he concocted an illicit elixir to seduce his sister-in-law. Yes, really.
Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms Most delightful of all, perhaps, is the room dedicated to the aforementioned Countess of Arran’s later years, when she walked a pet badger around Luss on a leash—and, at the age of 62, piloted a powerboat at 102 miles per hour to earn the moniker “the fastest granny on the water” in the British tabloids. “We had 800 years of history sitting in the family archives and a building in the village that seemed a perfect opportunity to bring the stories to life,” Patrick notes. There are QR codes subtly etched on panels on the doors that tell those stories, which could easily be the basis for a particularly unhinged Wes Anderson film—if he decided to make one set around a Scottish loch, that is. (Get writing, Wes.)
Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms Those ancestral tales spill out of the bedrooms and into the surrounding landscape, with guest excursions designed around the very figures whose portraits line the walls. While my lingering travel fatigue meant I reluctantly had to skip a speedboat trip across the loch to Inchconnachan aboard the Beau Jangles —for this, you’ll channel the free-wheeling spirit of Lady Arran by roaring between the loch's wooded islands and dropping anchor for a glass of champagne—I did manage to head out on an exhilarating 4x4 safari into the dramatic hill ground rising behind the village. Bumping along rugged tracks, we passed through sweeping glens and areas of active peatland and native woodland restoration—part of a centuries-old commitment to conservation that makes the wild, cinematic beauty of the Highlands feel newly alive.
Photo: Getty Images Honestly, though, if you need a proper recharge, there’s no shame in spending the bulk of your stay simply hunkered down inside the inn. (I say this partly to justify the fact that is what I mostly did.) What truly elevates the Loch Lomond Arms from a handsome design project into a soul-restoring getaway is its staff, most of whom hail from the local area. I spent a lovely afternoon being guided around the town by the church beadle John Taylor, whose genuinely fascinating insights into local history—I was particularly dazzled by a Viking gravestone dating back to the 11th century in the churchyard—proved that Luss has been drawing raucous overseas tourists for well over a millennium. (John even came decked out in a kilt and a sporran for our wander, an impressive display of local dedication given the afternoon heat.) And that local spirit was especially apparent on the food and beverage front, overseen by the endlessly knowledgeable Matt, who guided me through an early-evening tasting in the Map Room as a fire crackled in the hearth; I regularly spotted him throughout my stay whizzing around pouring rare Scottish malts, alongside small-batch spirits from the village’s own Luss Distillery, for other guests.
Photo: Courtesy of the Loch Lomond Arms Then, there’s the food in the inn’s bustling pub and dining room, The Stag & Two Hounds, where the walls are wrapped in bespoke Trossachs-inspired wallpaper by Dundee artist Freya Cumming and the kitchen leans heavily on produce reared, caught, or foraged on the estate. My dinner began with crisp pork and apple croquettes—delivering all the hearty comfort of a Sunday roast in just a few sweet-and-savory bites—followed by silky slivers of Scottish salmon, cured in-house, of course. The real showstopper, however, was a killer steak and Lomond ale pie: tender estate beef slow-braised in dark and malty local beer beneath a lid of buttery pastry. (And for those planning a visit soon, there’s even more to look forward to on the culinary front: alongside the sun-dappled outdoor tables of The Gathering, the team is gearing up to unveil The Treasury, an intimate, candlelit fine-dining room hidden behind a curtain that will showcase the very best of the estate’s larder atop priceless family heirlooms.)
By the time I packed my bags to head back to Glasgow Airport—feeling entirely, miraculously restored after 48 hours of Highland hospitality—the Loch Lomond Arms had done exactly what it set out to do. And, it turns out, this is just the beginning of an ambitious new chapter for Luss Estates, which also offers a collection of charming historic cottages for rent around the village and has plans to bring the same design-led, high-craft ethos to future projects across the land. To paraphrase that famous old ballad: the banks of Loch Lomond just got a wee bit more bonnie.
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Source: Lifestyle
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