We’ve had nice feedback about our e-mail newsletters, so it gives me pleasure to introduce another. My feeling is that things have never been better at Ardtornish – and this update contains just a little of our news (more can be found on our website).

We love having visitors and keeping in touch with old friends – the vast majority of those staying here being people who’ve been before and have an existing connection with the place.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we do putting it together.

Availability
Summer has finally arrived, and brought with it lots of fine weather. We’ve enjoyed a busy Spring and are almost full through to late September, though we have some availability almost throughout if you’re looking for a last minute break.

Bookings for 2012 are now being taken. If you’re one of our regular guests and want your usual week, please get in touch as soon as possible to secure it - on stay@ardtornish.co.uk or +44 (0)1967 421 288

Upgrading...
Rose Cottage will be unavailable from late October 2011 to Spring 2012, as it's undergoing a complete upgrade. This includes replacing the upstairs bunkroom with a bathroom, and rearranging the ground floor to give a much better third bedroom and second bathroom. Unfortunately we shall lose two beds during the process (giving a total of six), but the upgrade will include complete renovation, redecoration and re-furnishing, so we expect the cottage will become one of our most popular properties.

Weddings & Events
This has been much our busiest year for weddings & events – most recently the Andrew Raven Memorial weekend, a huge success and great fun (more information available here). In May a St Andrews University reading group used Ardtornish House for a series of talks – again highly successful, with the same event booked again for 2012.

We have a large wedding party in the house and all the cottages in October, with another of our Slow Food weekends (details shortly in the news section of our website), followed by a birthday party in November. I’m receiving a lot of enquiries about Ardtornish House as a wedding or function venue, so expect 2012 to be even busier.

Please check out our weddings & events website here: www.ardtornish-events.co.uk, or contact me for further information.

We're delighted to report that our new Loch Tearnait Hydro scheme is more or less complete. We are underway with the commissioning and testing process, and if all goes well we should be exporting energy to the grid in late July or early August. There remains some tidying up to do, and the landscape will take some time to recover from the works, but we're proud of our efforts.

We've also started on phase two of our development programme - the construction of the Rannoch Dam scheme. A new and larger dam is being built to replace the redundant original hydro scheme. A new and larger pipe (buried this time) will replace the old one, and there will be a new and larger turbine and power house. We expect this work to be completed by Spring 2012.

We apologise for the inconvenience the development is causing to our visitors, and are grateful to all those who've supported Ardtornish in this effort and turned a blind eye to the short term disturbance. We hope that a walk up the completed new track to Loch Tearnait or the new power house will show that we've made every effort to make the best of the construction process. We'd value comments and views - to be sent, please, to: angus@ardtornish.co.uk.

We’re fortunate that Morvern is great otter country. The chances of happening upon this most elusive of creatures is better here than in most parts of the country, particularly if you know where to look and are an early riser. One of the best sites is the mouth of the Aline as it enters the sea below Castle Cottage. An early morning visit to ‘Allan’s Hide’ when the tide is full can be rewarded with wonderful close-up views of fishing otter. The narrows at the entrance to Loch Aline, Miodar Bay and the slip at Boat House are other hotspots.

This chap was in an entirely different location however. I came across him high in the White Glen, in a pool on the Allt Buidhe Mor just below the watershed with Glen Sanda. Otters are known to be great travelers, with males exploiting up to 75kms of waterways within their ranges. What he was doing up there I don’t know. Simply transiting through, or off in search of a mate perhaps? The burn was extremely low so he swam round and round in the ‘pot’, twice disappearing under the bank, before walking his way down the rocks to the pool below and out of sight. All the while I kept my dogs in and they sat watching with as much curiosity as me.

PS Don’t believe what Alan says about early rising. I saw one last week in the Aline sea pool at tea-time – Ed.

The new settlement at Achabeag – several years, and numerous public meetings and consultations, in the planning – is now well underway. The site – two miles along the Sound of Mull from Lochaline, with spectacular views across the Sound and south east towards the Firth of Lorne – is carefully chosen as magnificently situated, discreet from the road, with access to services, and on land suitable for building and gardening. Six years of preparation is now reaching fruition.

Late in June we completed the first sale, and detailed planning applications are being made by the buyers for the first of the twenty new houses. Development will be in three phases, and all but one of the sites in phase one are now accounted for – mainly by people planning to live and work in Morvern. We’re also working with the Highland Small Communities Housing Trust, to provide up to six affordable housing units as phase two – we hope both for rent and for low-cost self-build.

Achabeag is designed to bring new blood to Morvern, and help the revitalisation of this community. It will also be an exceptional new place to live. If you’d like more information about it, please let us know – and keep an eye on our website for news of a new dedicated Achabeag web presence, to be launched soon.

The Spring garden was as beautiful as usual with the spread of white daffodils below the Keeper’s Path. Rhododendron rubiginosa flowered as well as ever. The anxiety about damage from the long low winter temperatures was gradually reduced as shrubs came into leaf, but many of the Cistus had been affected and we were sorry to lose them. Rhododendron falconeri suffered and several of the important Polar Bear leaves went brown, but by June they were recovering. Rhododendron basicum came out and I was able to take a photograph. The hydrangeas soon threw off their scorched look.

A much worse attack to the garden came from the storms in May, just after most of the trees had come into leaf. Elsewhere in the Highlands winds reached 100 mph. Branches of Cercidiphyllum were blown over the front drive and lawns were covered with limbs of oak. A large part of a Norway maple fell parallel to the path up to the Iron Stag, narrowly missing the rhododendron of the Shilsonii Group - one of our favourites, a present from the Banks’s of Hergest Croft.

The worst loss was of the biggest Norway maple, which guarded the south-western entrance to the main rhododendron glen, giving the ravine a sheltered and intimate feeling. The trunks are rooted in the ground yet, to be kept as a natural sculpture, and we’ll clear some of the Rhododendron ‘Pink Pearl’ and replant with spring-flowering shrubs, to be enjoyed from the road.

All round the garden the sheets of bluebells followed the celandines. Ian Lamb is taking extra care not to cut the bluebell leaves too early, even if this means heavy raking after mowing. We’re encouraging buttercups with pignut, cuckoo flower and wood anemones and planting June-flowering primula among them, in line with the plan to mix exotic with native flora. The ‘Melancholy Thistle’ has taken over a bed for itself.

Thanks for reading – and we hope to see you soon!