Kiltarlity Lodges — Hotel in Great Britain

We had a fantastic time at the Kiltarlity Lodge. We have visited before (we have a family member who lives in the village and the lodge is a very convenient place to stay whilst we visit). To our delighted surprise the lodges have been renovated and what a fantastic job the owners have made. All energy now included (previously was pay by meter), where we could would say we stayed previously just because of convenience, we can now honestly say we can't wait to visit again and have defiantly spend more time enjoy the luxuries that the lodge has to offer itself.

Kitarlity lodge pride themselves on given their customers a really forest location experience. They are tucked well into the forest landscape, the workers use many of the natural materials provide by the forest to decorate their surrounds. The natural feel to the whole site is cosy and sitting round a campfire is magical under the starlit forest canopy.

We were also very happy to hear that this year the site opened the pool for the winter season. We hope the trial went well and that the owners are able to continue to offer this perk to customers in future all season round. The pool at the accommodation is great! Clean and tidy changing rooms, the water is warm, the children had a fabulous time! We did not rent a lodge with a Jacuzzi but with the pool facility available we really did not feel we missed out (note all be the Jacuzzi at the other lodges did look fabulous and was well disguised by the natural forest surroundings).

Surrounding area and places to visit:

We have been attending the area for years so have visited most tourist areas. In our opinion this area of Scotland is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The accommodation is less than 10 minutes away from Loch Ness, 40 minute drive from Fortrose (famous for dolphin spotting). We very much recommend visiting Rogie Falls for a fantastic walk across the falls and around the forest (again 40 minute trip). This year we visited Lossiemouth, a traditional seaside town about 1 hour east of Inverness this year and what a stunning little seaside town this is, a must see if you have a sunny day by the seaside, I even put it out there that this seaside resort is probably one of if not the best looking beaches in the UK. The Glens are only a short drive away and well worth a trip round, the views are fantastic and there is also something special about seeing the full sized live deer roaming the mountain landscape.

More locally the closest main town, Beauly has a sensible size supermarket but would urge you to venture into the town centre itself and visit the local bakers and butchers found on the corner of the town centre carpark. Want to take a haggis home, no problem John M Munro Butchers produce some of the best tasting Haggis in Scotland, they can even vacuum pack the haggis ready for your drive home. At the Harry Gow Bakery treat yourself to a Dream Ring, they are to die for!

Inverness is 12 miles away, the drive in along the Beauly Firth is also extremely pretty. Inverness has everything you need if you fancy a trip into the city. Not that you will have much time for commercial leisure but if you fancy a change, the Leisure Centre also has fantastic pool facilities with flumes and wave machine, there is a cinema, a bowling alley. We highly recommend Whin Park for family with children and you can take a walk along the river and head back into town via the Ness Islands, an extremely pretty area of Inverness. On the East outskirts of Inverness (A96 towards the airport) you will find the Inverness Retail Park packed with shops, chain restaurants and your "Extra" size Supermarkets.

Wishing all who takes up our recommendations a wonderful stay, you will have a fabulous time in this location,...

A beautiful, woodland setting. The lodges are well spaced out with individual parking spaces. However this is not a vast, sprawling soulless holiday park. This is a neat and very well designed collection of considerately placed lodges. They each have a hot tub and outside sitting/eating areas, ours had a wee barbecue too! Our stay was just after Easter from the Monday to Friday and it appeared all the lodges were occupied, however we were never disturbed or bothered by any noise or other issues. A dog friendly site, we saw lots of people walking their dogs round the site and along the laid out dog walks. The lodges are very well built and are very cosy. A short use of the electric fire warms up the lounge very quickly if it gets a bit cool. Our lodge was beautifully clean and well laid out. A selection of crockery, cutlery and cookware were in the kitchen along with washing up sponge, cloth and dish towels. A good sized fridge freezer, microwave, toaster and kettle are provided, making it a wee home from home. We stopped in Inverness to get groceries but could have had a supermarket delivery had we wanted. There is also a very good Co-op in Beauly, a short drive up the road. (Can recommend Harry Gow bakery in Beauly too! Delicious pies!) A very comprehensive folder of information is provided along with a book of information about where to go, what to see and things to do locally. Instructions for recycling and using things in the lodge are discretely displayed in small frames. The rooms are attractively decorated and coordinated. Towels and toiletries - hand wash and shampoo/shower gel - are provided. The rooms have plenty of storage and hanging space and have an ample number of plug points for hairdryer (provided) and device charging. Although we were told not to expect the Wi-Fi to be perfect, we had no problems at all during our stay. The lodges are beautifully located for accessing lots of walking and visiting different places. Urquhart Castle, Drumnadrochit, Loch Ness to name just a few. All in all we had a lovely stay. We relaxed and enjoyed the peace and quiet. We had no need to contact the reception for any issues but the signage explains very clearly how to get assistance if required when no one is on duty. I only spoke to the lady in reception when I was handing our key in. She was very friendly and we chatted for a wee while. So. If you are looking for somewhere that is not loud, brash and full of on site shops, clubs and bars. Somewhere you can take your dog - we didn’t have one but saw many people who did! Where you are not bothered by people (unless you want to be!) Where you can breathe and see squirrels and listen to the birds - (we had a particularly cheeky, shouty robin visiting with us a few times!) then I can highly recommend Kiltarlity Lodges. We are already thinking about when we can book...

What can I say about Kiltarlity? We LOVED it! It’s out of the way, so if you want walkability to a pub etc, then this is not the place for you. This is country. It’s scenic. It’s quiet. It’s simply beautiful. We rented the Monarch 13 and it was gorgeous.

Huge open plan downstairs with one twin room and a bathroom downstairs. Fully equipped kitchen (nicer than my own kitchen). Two more bedrooms upstairs - one double with en-suite and one master with en-suite and a huge bath tub and a television and a balcony too.

If you turn right out of the lodges you’ll be heading to Inverness and if you take the left turn a few miles down the road you get a scenic drive through the small village of Beuly where there are shops and pubs etc.

If you turn left you’ll be heading on a scenic tour around the highlands towards Fort Augustus and Loch Ness.

If you’re using your GPS to get to a Loch Ness cruise with Jacobite Cruises (highly recommend them) take the left turn out of the lodges, then DO NOT take the left turn a mile down the road, it’s a horrible route to take that is often a single track with no passing spaces and quite nerve wracking. Continue on past that left turn and carry on through the hills and you will reach the road that goes along the edge of the Loch itself - it’s probably 5 minutes longer at most.

I would just like to thank everyone involved in taking care of these 20 or so lodges - we would return here in a heartbeat if we didn’t live nearly 500 miles away.

Get a little shopping in Inverness and drive up here and the peace and serenity will make you fall in love with Kiltarlity!

Good to know: free WiFi was excellent, jacuzzi was lovely, TV was...