Email Old Kilmun House enquiries & reservations: bookscotland@madbookings.com
Other places to stay in and around Dunoon
Old Kilmun House is a lovely, luxurious holiday home picturesquely situated
in two and a half acres of private gardens at the side of the Holy Loch
in the Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park in Argyllshire.
It’s a grade “A” listed historic house, but it feels warm and homely rather than like a monument. After seven seasons, now, we hope we are getting nearer our aim of making it the most comfortable and best-equipped holiday house available in the West of Scotland.
We’ve consistently been awarded the highest possible 4 star ratings from the Scottish Tourist Board, and our guest feed-back is almost universally positive.
Old Kilmun House Accommodation
The lower ground floor downstairs has a big snug with big TV, DVD and wood-burner, plus a games room and a separate snooker room, accessible from the garden. So the living accommodation is flexible enough and comfortable enough to suit most types of parties – and at most times of year.
Ground Floor; entrance hall with staircase. Wood panelled dining room with large open fire. Large sitting room with fireplace for coal fire. Breakfast / kitchen room with Aga. Utility room, Shower room and WC.
First floor; 2 x large double bedrooms (loch views), 2 x double bedrooms (loch views). Double bedroom (woodland views). Children's twin bunk bedroom (woodland views). Bathroom with bath, shower & basin.
Bathroom with large corner bath, shower & loo, sauna. Separate Loo with basin. Second Floor; 2 x large triple attic rooms with combed ceilings, set up as twins or triples. Two additional spare occasional beds available. Maximum Occupancy is 16 adults, 20 in total.
We’ve tried to make it more luxurious and better equipped than our own house, so that even a wet weekend will be a comfortable and memorable one.
Eating In
We have two or three chefs who come to the house and cook for guests to
lighten the self-catering load and they are all delightful to work with
and highly qualified chefs with two AA rosettes each.
Working under the banner “Taste Scot” they can provide anything from a kitchen supper that you serve yourself at a reasonable price for three courses, through to a standard menu three course dinner party. Taste Scot will also organize a half day or a full day cooking course for you in the kitchen at Kilmun if you and your guests are interested in that.
Eating Out
We are really well-served (by Scottish standards anyway) for good pubs.
Whistlefield Inn and Coylet Inn, up the side of Loch Eck at 10 and 5 minutes
respectively, are both well-recommended – we’ve included menus
in the house information pack. Children, but not dogs, are welcome at
both.
The more easily walkable pubs are both fine, too, providing big portions of good basic pub food. The Cot House, with a playground for kids, is probably the more traditionally pub-like pub of the two. It’s exactly a mile away.
The Pier at Kilmun is a wee bit closer and classier, grub-wise. Dunoon has dozens of cafes, bars, takeaways and restaurants. The Loch Fyne Oyster Bar trades a bit on reputation price-wise but is a landmark destination in these parts and only about 35 minutes away.
Far superior in our humble opinion is the glory that is InverCottage at Strathlachlan, 40 minutes away on this side of Loch Fyne.
Food Shopping
The Cot House service station on the main road has a good convenience
store attached, selling papers, basic groceries etc and is open long hours
every day. The diner there is not really recommended, but the shop is
fine, like the pub.
It’s a mile away (if you are walking, take the pretty little footbridge over the river off the road to the left, 150 yards from the main road junction). Dunoon is a busy little town all through the year, and has lots of traditional shops including butcher, bakeries, hardware, little galleries, etc.
Its two main supermarkets are both open seven days - Safeways on John Street till 8pm weekdays, and the Co-op on Queen St till 10pm.
The Garden
The 2.5 acre garden, like the house, is absolutely unique.
Originally built by the family of the Duke of Argyll in 1693 – the
Campbells have a family mausoleum next door at Old Kilmun Church –
the house was owned in Victorian times by the scots industrialist, philanthropist
and collector James Duncan, and then by the Younger family, who founded
the amazing Benmore Gardens a couple of miles away, which still contain
the tallest trees in the UK.
They also planted a huge variety in ours. With streams and waterfalls and a huge variety of plants, it’s a stunning garden. Our immediate neighbour (who lives in the Victorian wing which James Duncan added to the house) makes occasional use of one small private bit of lawn, but your party will generally have the run of all the gardens and the woods.
Activities
The house is well situated for sight-seeing around the West Coast. The
immediate area is renowned for some of the best walking in Scotland, and
it’s a great base for fishing, riding, shooting, golf, sailing or
cycling. We’ve put in 6 fishing rods, 8 bikes for different sizes
(with helmets), and 4 bags of golf clubs.
There’s loads to do in the area, and some great local pubs and restaurants, but we’ve also tried to make it comfy enough for people who don’t want to go anywhere else.
There’s a croquet set, football goal, cricket and badminton sets, plus the 13 foot trampoline, barbecue and all important “midge machine” in the garden.
As well as the ¾ sized billiard table in its own room, there is a little games room downstairs with a dartboard plus a multifunction / convertable entertainment thingy with table football, air hockey, table tennis, mini-snooker etc. Or you can go and play in the sauna.
We’ve supplied Monopoly, Outburst, Pictionary, Scrabble, Backgammon, Chess, a few jigsaws etc for days or evenings when you don’t fancy anything more energetic. There’s a pretty decent library with loads of Scottish authors represented, and over 100 CDs.
The snug features 40” widescreen telly with CD surround-sound plus a variety of videos and DVD's. Our package includes Sky Sports and Movies. This web-site features a virtual tour with 360 degree photography of lots of the rooms, as well as a gallery of other photos, info about things to do in the area, and some useful links.
Another option is to use our friends from the fabulous TasteScot outside caterers (formerly running the award-winning An Lochan Hotel in Tighnabruich and restaurant in Glasgow) to cook a celebration meal for you so you can make the most of the opportunity to relax in our gorgeous paneled dining room.
Walking
The walking all around Kilmun is absolutely fantastic, and from the house
itself there are half a dozen spectacular routes that take you into some
magical places in the Forest Park. Puck’s Glen is unmissable, but
the Ardnadam Heritage Trail, Glen Finnairt, Ardentinny Forest, and Cowal
Way are also all decently marked and come highly recommended.
You can do circular routes that take anything from an hour and a half to eight or nine hours. We’ve left you maps and guides in the sitting room, and more details are available from the tourist office in Dunoon.
Cycling It really is a great way to see the scenery in the area – and the topography is such that you don’t need to do much back-breaking hill work. The trips up Loch Eck, round the corner to Ardentinny, and through the pass to the Kyles of Bute are all lovely.
The circular route turning left out of the house, past Strone and Ardentinny on the coast road and then through the forest to Sligrachan sees you joining the A815 on Loch Eck at the Whistlefield Inn. 15 miles or so as a round trip; there’s one steep climb of about a mile which’ll test all but the fittest, but then it’s downhill to the pub!
We’ve equipped the house with 6 kid’s bikes of different sizes and a couple for grown ups
Attractions
Generally,you are fantastically positioned to see some of the world’s
most spectacular scenery. The views aren’t bad from the house itself,
but drive up to Loch Fyne and down to Loch Lomond,
or into the Kyles of Bute, or down the Maccrahanish / Mull of Kintyre
peninsula, and you’ll see vistas to take your breath away.
Enjoy the local area on foot or by bike, but if you don’t know this area of Scotland well, and you have better than 50 yard visibility, we’d really recommend you do spend a bit of time exploring it (and not just because people use fewer of our logs when they are out the house and wear the furniture out less).
If the weather’s rubbish, you are 75 minutes from Glasgow by Ferry and M8, and less than 2 hours from Edinburgh if the traffic’s okay. They are both great cities to visit.
Benmore Botanic Gardens only three miles away towards Loch Eck, absolutely amazing set of gardens planted and cared for originally by James Duncan and then the Younger family (beer-age and politics) who owned Old Kilmun House for ages, and added the Victorian additions on the end of the house which we don’t own.
Benmore gardens are a branch of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Awesome trees, including the tallest in Britain, and lots related to our own here; a great tea shop at the gates, too. Dogs on leads only.
Golf Strone’s pretty, 9 hole course which was designed by James Braid, is well-signposted, just over a mile away. Innellan is an 18 holes course, about 20 minutes away. Cowal has 18 holes and is a bit closer just above Dunoon.
There’s also a second fabulous 9 hole course 35 minutes away at Tighnabruich with lovely views up the Kyles of Bute, with a real“island golf” feel to it. Visitors are welcome any time there isn’t a match on all these courses. You are welcome to use the four sets of golf clubs we’ve left for guests.
Fishing
The River Eck is one of the most expensive trout stretches in the West
of Scotland and mostly carved up by timeshare. Fortunately, though, there’s
a mass of very good value options for both loch and river fishing locally,
with daily and some weekly permits available from Purdies on Argyll Street
(open 9am to 5pm).
Under 16 permits are all half price. We’ve supplied half a dozen rods and some basic kit – spinning and casting – which is kept on rafters of the bike shed. Rivers – Cur (charged per day per rod, weekly ticket available), Masson, Ruel, and Finnart, (weekly ticket available) – any legal lure, no maggots.
Lochs - Dunoon Reservoir (rainbow trout), Loch Loskin (brown trout, charge including boat), Loch Tarsan (brown trout charge per rod plus another charge for boat if you want it, weekly ticket available) – all fly fishing only, all open 7 days. Loch Eck is also available.
DIRECTIONS
Old Kilmun House is situated on the shores of the Holy Loch, adjacent
to the Argyll Forest Park, and is perfectly placed for exploring the Cowal
peninsula, the West of Scotland generally, and the Loch Lomond and The
Trossachs National Park, within which it sits.
Two minutes from the Benmore Botanic Gardens, it's a 10 minute drive from Dunoon, 35 from Inverary, 40 from Loch Lomond or the Island of Bute. The "long drive" to Glasgow is less than an hour and a half.
Via the M8 and ferry from MacEnroes Point at Gourock, we are just 70 minutes from Glasgow Airport.
Email Old Kilmun House enquiries & reservations: bookscotland@madbookings.com
