It’s around 5:30pm but it feels like midnight. We are driving to remote Ayrshire, making our way via one night on the Durham coast to a Scottish castle. Views of the restless, grey sea are soon replaced with rural scenes. We pass field upon field of lush, almost suede-like grass, scattered with grazing cows and sheep.
For our final hour’s drive, the roads are replaced with winding country lanes and the low sun has rapidly set. It’s abruptly and intensely dark, the sky absent of light pollution, the narrow roads free of street lights. The only flashes we see are from passing farmhouses, illuminated in the pitch-black with twinkling colourful lights and LED snowmen.
We reach the coast. The sea isn’t visible in the darkness but I feel a shift in the air with the ocean so close. There’s no signposts to our destination, and so we follow our directions closely, until we reach automatic gates and are directed through. The driveway is a mile long, with shadowing woodland on either side of us. As the road widens, Glenapp Castle comes into view in all its story-book magic; turrets, towers and all. A lofty Christmas tree glitters in the foreground beneath the stars. Our three-year-old utters a hushed, ‘Wow’.
We are greeted warmly by our car and ushered in from the cold. There’s no lobby but we sign in by guest book in traditional fashion. It’s 2nd December, and intimations of Christmas are everywhere. A tree grazing the ceiling is adorned with purple, silver and frosted leaves. Garlands interlaced with burgundy ribbon weave up the stairs. Benjamin, Glenapp’s genial Operations Manager, shows us to our suite the ‘Earl of Inchcape’, one of 21 luxurious bedrooms named after an element of the castle’s heritage.
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