Author: Lady Claire MacDonald
Kinloch’s Beginnings
It is hard to think that it is 50 years ago, on April 3rd, since Godfrey and I opened the doors at Kinloch to hotel guests. In some ways it feels like 5 decades ago, but in most ways it all feels like yesterday! Yet in that time we have raised our 4 ‘children’, who themselves now have children, our eldest grandson is 19. Kinloch is now run by Isabella, our second daughter. And although she would hate me to write what I am about to write, but we just could not have been luckier in having her take Kinloch into the second generation of our proud family. She has the vision to adapt, to move things on as they should and must. And Kinloch is proof that she gets it right.
Evolution of Tourism
What a vast change has happened in tourism, our industry, over 50 years. When we first began, our guests usually came to stay for between ten days and two weeks. These days we tend to have guests coming to stay for 3-7 nights, nearly all arriving by car, so that they can travel around and see more of Scotland during their holiday. Often, in the far-off days, they came without a car, and we would go and collect them from the train station in Kyle. In those days, we had 12 bedrooms, 6 with private bathrooms – then an unheard-of luxury, with 3 bathrooms shared between the other 6 bedroom guests. No bedroom had its own telephone. We had one phone for the guests which was in a tiny cupboard under the staircase – and it was very uncomfortable for tall people to fold themselves into the cupboard if they needed to use the phone. These days of course, we have telephones and televisions in all bedrooms. Yet we almost need neither, because now we have a fairly good mobile phone signal, and so many guests watch anything they want to see on their iPads or laptops.
Enhancements and Expansions
We sued our lawyers for negligence in the late 1990’s and with the resulting proceeds we built a large 3 story house as an extension, opened in 1999, and known within our family as Whippets’ Haven; in those days we had a succession of beloved whippets, hence its nickname! It is officially called the South Lodge. It is an elegant house, with a turret. And these days we have dachshunds, shorter legs are a bit easier! It provided us with a large room – 45’ by 25’, in which I used to do cooking demonstrations, and where we held big parties for the guests, such as at New Year.
Modern Kinloch and Family Values
These days our large living room/kitchen has been converted into 2-bedroom suites plus our massage room. In total, both houses give us 18 bedrooms. We won’t ever become any larger, because then we would lose the family feel to the whole business. And it is this family atmosphere which Isabella has carried forward so successfully. The same family feeling extends to our staff. We have a valued team of people who work closely with Isabella, to give the sort of care and service we want for our guests. And 50 years ago, the hotel season throughout Skye really began at Easter and ended around early October. Godfrey and I tried all we could to extend it, till it was suggested to us, by a visiting journalist from the Times newspaper that we might try cooking demonstration 3 or 4 nights breaks. Which we duly began, and thereby Novembers Decembers and Januarys and Februarys became working months too, along with the rest of the year. Skye is at its loveliest, I always think, during the winter months when the leaves are off the trees-the view is so much wider.
Adapting and Overcoming Challenges
During the first part of our 50 years Godfrey and I became fairly skilled at most things. Godfrey, especially, as a plumber. Our water supply, which is private and comes from a deep pool filled from a limitless source from the hill behind Kinloch, about a mile from the house, always cut out when we had excessive rain. Those of you who know Skye know that this is not unusual! The force of water, when it rained hard, pushed the rose from the end of the pipe in the pool – the pipe which took our water to the holding tank, hence the lack of water. Godfrey would go up the hill, strip off and get into the pool, unblock the pipe, make sure the fine gravel wasn’t going to repeat the blockage, then he would dress and climb back down the hill to home. If it was in the dark, I always worried that he might trip and break his leg! He was very adept at keeping our Aga cookers working. And if the septic tank blocked, he could, and often did, get in to clear the blockage. These days there are professionals who do this, but way back then there was no-one but us to carry out everything. We learnt well!
Culinary Excellence and Deep Connections
What has mattered always, throughout our 50 years and upon which we have built our reputation has been the food we give our guests. It is all homemade, all seasonal, all sourced from as close to Kinloch as is possible – obviously there are items such as lemons and limes which we have to buy in from afar, but we increasingly use homegrown fruits and vegetables, herbs, and foraged sea herbs, mushrooms and fungi, berries and nuts. Skye is rich in its natural growth, and around us at Kinloch we are designated an area of SSI, Specific Scientific Interest.
Personal Reflections and Looking Ahead
We made lifelong friends of many of our guests. We used to really anticipate with joy the visits each year made by individuals we grew to love. We consider ourselves rich in this aspect of life. And our working lives were punctuated by very trying and testing times indeed – two of these happened the same year, the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001, when all countryside was closed throughout the UK, and in September of the same year, the truly appalling attacks of 9/11. As the news unfolded that day, and we had several guests from the United States, we tried our best to cushion them from their awful anxieties – one couple had a son who flew with United Airlines, and they could not get a phone call to the States. You can only imagine their anguish. We kept the fires burning in both our drawing rooms throughout the night, we encourage anyone who wanted to sit by the fires in their night clothes, we plied them with whisky, tea, coffee, anything they wanted but as our guests. It was a very long night for them all, followed by long and difficult days when we all felt virtually cut off from the outside world due to lack of communications.
It is a privilege to run a hotel. We are at the production end of so many life celebrations, weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, last holidays before anticipated death – the last is such a very poignant happening, but we have had several, and to share with the family such an intensely personal and inevitable parting is very humbling indeed. That anyone should choose to come to Kinloch for a last time together is very special for us. We give as much comfort as we possibly can, whenever it is required.
But I do always worry about one time, when I spent many minutes on the other side of a locked bathroom door, trying to coax a bride to unlock the door and come down to her wedding, where everyone was waiting for her downstairs. I wish I knew that I had done the right thing. Had she locked herself in for a good reason, I wonder? Did the marriage survive? Had I unwittingly, and at the request of her parents, actually helped her into a wrong marriage? I will never know.
We tend to look back on the past 50 years, but briefly. The most important thing is to look forward, hopefully to another 50 years. We feel so proud not just that our beloved Kinloch is still in business, but that, under Isabella’s management, with Godfrey still helping her in the office, that Kinloch is positively flourishing – our booking numbers are our proof! We rejoice and give thanks!
