Kishorn and Courthill House

All good holidays must come to an end and that end, for us, is today. Yesterday we spent a quiet day pottering around Kishorn and sitting in front of the fire. I even did some crochet.

Here’s a photo I took of Loch Kishorn a couple of days ago when I got up early and went for a walk.

This next photo is of the Applecross Mountains and the crossing over the Bealach which we did on Wednesday.

There’s a selfie telephone box in Kishorn.

Last night I tried another beer from Williams Bros Brewery. This one contained seaweed, an ingredient used in traditional beer-making in coastal communities on the west of Scotland. It was surprisingly good and I had it with a seaweed vegan cheese from Nutcrafter Creamery.

We stayed in this delightful cottage right next to the Applecross Mountains.

It has been a perfect base to explore this area and gave us the option to stay in and relax on rainy days or go out and explore on sunny ones. There’s stuff to see north, south, east, and west of here and you could easily spend two weeks exploring the area. We cooked all our evening meals in the cottage – it had everything we needed including a hot water bottle for every bed.

The cottage has an interesting history. It was once the gardener’s cottage for Courthill House. I had to do some Google searching to find out about Courthill House because it’s no longer there and it’s a sad story. Here’s a great post about Courthill House which covers the full history but the gist is that when the owner died in 1945 the house was sold and the purchaser removed the roof to sell the lead and avoid paying tax. Here’s how it looked in 1931:

Once the roof was removed it started to fall apart. Here’s a photo from the same blog taken in 2011.

I took a photo of it yesterday and it’s just a pile of rubble on what looks like a construction site.

Courthill House was in a perfect spot, south-facing and looking over Loch Kishorn with views of the Applecross Mountains to the east. The garden walls are still there as is the Chapel, which is apparently owned by the Scottish Episcopal Church.

It’s sad to see magnificent buildings and gardens fall into disrepair. Growing up in Brisbane where we don’t have old homes and buildings like these makes me appreciate them so much more. I know they are costly to maintain but removing the roof doesn’t help. The gardener’s cottage where we stayed has been tastefully restored and in a way that’s sympathetic to the age of the home. I highly recommend this place and would come back and stay here again.