Explore Some Of Europe's Most Inspiring Tracts Of Wilderness In Northern Scotland

On an autumn road trip through the glens and moors of northern Scotland, Lisa Grainger swings by reimagined historic estates, beds down in snug country cottages, and loses herself on some of Europe’s most inspiring tracts of wilderness.

- Lisa Grainger

Cramb and I were in Perthshire, in the foothills of the Scottish Highlands, on a swath of land next to the Gleneagles estate, and I did indeed feel on top of the world—both physically and emotionally. Below us, a pair of young huntsmen clad in sage-green tweed led three stocky white ponies carrying a picnic lunch in wicker baskets on their backs. Streams burbled in the golden heather. In the distance, a hawk rode thermals above a jagged peak. And around us stretched mile upon mile of rust-coloured moorland broken only by the occasional loch, in which the dappled yellows and reds of autumn foliage were reflected.

It was the first day of a week-long road trip through the north of Scotland, on which I was to take in some of its finest new hotels and traverse some of its greatest tracts of wilderness. Having arrived at Gleneagles that morning, I was eager to get out and explore the nearby glens, but this being Scotland, it wasn’t long before clouds closed in and a steady drizzle began to fall. When, after an hour or so, my walking boots started to squelch with thick, peaty mud, even Cramb had to concede that it was time to call it a day. “What you need,” he said with a mischievous grin, “is a Sloegasm: a shot of sloe gin, topped off with champagne. That should warm you up.”

A Sloegasm would have undoubtedly raised a few eyebrows at Gleneagles a few years ago; then, it was more of a strait-laced, Scotch-and-haggis kind of place. But since its new owner, the 38-year-old Indian-born entrepreneur Sharan Pasricha, embarked on a multimillion-dollar redesign, which wrapped up this summer, it has become a new centre for fun and sophistication in the Highlands.