A former church manse reimagined as a boutique hotel on the North Coast 500 tourist route has been listed among the best hotels in the world to visit in 2024.
Condé Nast Traveller has announced the winners of the Gold List 2024, an annual list of its favourite hotels, resorts, and more from around the world.
Selected and curated by Condé Nast Traveller’s global editorial team in seven cities across the globe, the list “serves as inspiration for those seeking remarkable travel experiences in the year ahead”.
The 30th edition of the annual list features a total of 75 resorts and hotels showcasing a wide range of travel destinations - ranging from Bab Al Shams Desert Resort and Spa in Dubai and Palácio Príncipe Real in Lisbon to Singita Sasakwa Lodge in Tanzania and Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro.
Two Scottish hotels make the prestigious list - the 5-star Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder and Lundies Hotel in Tongue in the northwest Highlands.
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Condé Nast recommends visiting Gleneagles - “a hotel that needs no introduction” - in 2024 to take advantage of its location “set against the sprawling Scottish countryside” in its own 850-acre estate.
“Gleneagles gained icon status pretty rapidly after it opened in 1924 and soon became known as one of the world’s loveliest hotels for golfing, relaxing and exploring the bonny lands beyond,” Condé Nast states.
“Home to three world-class golf courses (the King’s Course, Queen’s Course and PGA Centenary Course), the hotel reached new levels of fame in 2014 when hosting the 40th Ryder Cup. Beyond golf, Gleneagles is much loved by an array of celebrities who flock to the estate to spend time in the great outdoors (the hotel offers falconry, fishing, shooting, archery and more) or kick back in the award-winning spa, with two indoor pools, an outdoor thermal pool and 20 treatment rooms where guests can settle down for massages that use lotions and potions made with local ingredients and Scottish botanicals.”
Condé Nast also recommends its readers visit Lundies House in 2024, considering the former manse to be “the most beautiful hotel north of Inverness”.
“Tranquil Scandinavian design and bespoke Scottish cabinetry typify the properties across the 13 Scottish Wildland estates owned by Dane Anders Holch Povlsen, but Lundies is the jewel. Its launch four years ago, just before the pandemic, went somewhat unnoticed,” Condé Nast states.
“The thick stone walls of the 1842 former clergy house (Reverend Lundie was an early resident) are gorgeously bolstering. Here you’re swaddled from the temperature shifts of Scotland’s rocky Highland coastline.”
The luxury travel magazine goes on to declare that Lundies “has achieved the holy grail of the small hotel” in having “the atmosphere of an intimate country house that is as private or clubbable as the mood takes you”.
“There are no enforced chats between guests, but no awkward silences either. The staff are present but not neurotically so. Lundies’ food is immaculately seasonal and local”, Condé Nast adds.
“There’s a natural pool for swimming in a stream in the garden and a luminous little dining room with walls hand-painted by a botanical artist in a shimmering dreamscape of midsummer blossom. When lit by candles it’s quite a thing to behold, especially after sitting around the massive iron fire pit at dusk in the courtyard, drinking Orkney gin and watching the summer’s second batch of swallows whirling in and out of the wood stack.”
Danish conservationist and businessman Anders Holch Povlsen and his wife Anne - Scotland's largest private landowners - purchased Lundies in 2016.
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The couple’s preservation and hospitality organisation Wildland then collaborated with Groves-Raines Architects in Edinburgh to convert the former manse, which is named after Reverend Lundy, one of the first occupants, into a luxury guest house.
Thomas MacDonell, director of conservation for Wildland, said at the time of the purchase that it was an attempt to help provide more accommodation for travellers on the NC500, which had launched the previous year.
“We are aiming at the middle market and believe there is an under-provision in that part of the world for accommodation for people on the NC500,” he said.
Speaking in 2019 about the guesthouse, Wildland co-owner Anne Storm Holch Povlsen confirmed that Lundies is “a marriage of the unique Scottish vernacular and contemporary Scandinavian design”.
She said: "The Nordics represent something very straightforward and easy going. The design is very much influenced by the respect for materials, making a piece of furniture as simple yet functional and long-lasting as possible.
“We want Lundies to feel genuine and personal – not staged or contrived. Every item has been carefully sourced and selected.”
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