East Rhidorroch Lodge is about eight miles from the small fishing town of Ullapool, in Wester Ross on Scotland’s north-west coast. If you take a small detour about five miles along the unmade private road that leads to the Lodge, you’ll discover Rhidorroch House, a rather grand Victorian pile, and like us be disappointed to be told politely by the owners that this is not where you are staying. Let’s just say that (a) the Lodge is basic and (b) those with a predilection for stuffed polecats in glass cases and moth-eaten stag heads on the walls will feel quite at home.

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In the early 1900s, the North British Railway ran from Edinburgh to Glasgow and Carlisle, from Newcastle upon Tyne to Aberdeen. Those were the days when railways directly subsidized infrastructure-the North British built the Forth and Tay bridges to complete its Route to the North. Along the track were hotels owned by railways, North British Hotel in Edinburgh the most elegant. The building’s sprawling presence at the east end of Princes Street still invokes the Golden Age of the railways.

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