Spey River Trip - Scottish Castle - Attn Willie Gunn: Steelheader.net- Steelhead, Salmon and trout fishing

Willie Gunn, this is the type of castle I would like to stay in on our future salmon spey fly fishing trip to Granton on Spey waters. Please advise of availability and pricing at your leisure. Looks like they have lots of room available and yes I would like one that has been redecorated.

LOL

Cheers

BG

Queen of the castle

ACCORDING to Clare Macpherson-Grant Russell of Ballindalloch Castle in Banffshire, inheriting a great house is the easy part; it’s hanging on to the place that’s hard. When your family has lived in the same property for 500 years and that property is a Highland castle housing somewhere between 50 and 60 rooms (they’ve never counted), decorating isn’t a matter of splashing around a couple of litres of magnolia then nipping down to IKEA for a few flatpacks. So where do you start?

As Clare and her husband Oliver have discovered, the attic isn’t a bad place. "My darling father said ‘there are some ghastly paintings in the attic, although the frames are all right. Before you chuck them out you might want to get them checked.’ We did, and they turned out to be the largest collection of 17th-century Spanish paintings in private hands, so we put them up!"

As custodian of the family pile and the estate’s first "Lady Laird", Clare sees her role as preserving the castle, known as "the Pearl of the North", to hand on to the next generation - the 23rd. Set in the heart of whisky country, the estate is a magnet for those who want to hunt, shoot and fish, with the rivers Spey and Avon flowing through the grounds. When they returned to the castle 26 years ago, the couple set about turning it into a viable business that would pay for its upkeep.

"We had to completely commercialise the whole estate to survive because there was no income coming in. Ten years ago we started opening the house to the public too. We have 50 people staying in our houses from March to October; fishing, shooting and playing golf on the new golf course - it’s a real business. We are more about tourism now than anything else and the castle is the centre of our hospitality business.

Originally a Z-plan tower house, the castle has been added to by various Macpherson-Grants since it was built around 1546. Despite the large number of rooms and round-the-clock staff, it is surprisingly cosy and retains the air of a family home, albeit a large one. In every room there are pictures of the family - Clare with Oliver and their children, Guy, 36, Edward, 34 and Lucy, 31. "In the 16th century they made castles for warmth and comfort, so the rooms are small. We only have one big room, which is the dining room. This is foremost a family home and from the first of October the ropes go back and we use the whole place for family and friends," says Clare.

With so many rooms to decorate and furnish, the Macpherson-Grant Russells adopt a painting-the-Forth-Bridge mentality and have stuck to a steady programme, taking them one at a time and using 22-generations’ worth of antique furniture, works of art and ornaments as inspiration. When Clare talks about having cousin George’s turn-of-the-century sofa recovered, you just know that she’s not referring to this millennium.

"We try to do one room every year. When we came to live here when I was five there was one bathroom in the house and if it rained we ran around with buckets. My parents did a lot to restore the property, including the installation of eight bathrooms. When we came back we did a lot too, including more bathrooms. If one generation doesn’t do any renovation, it nearly brings it all down," says Clare.

Having done up 65 houses on the estate over the years, Clare is no slouch when it comes to interiors, but she says the castle is a different proposition. "I find it extremely difficult to decorate a 16th-century castle. I am helped by interior designer Sylvia Lawson Johnston and we do the bigger rooms together. I prefer pastel shades as they’re easier to live with and chose the apple green wallpaper in the drawing room because it’s very soothing. It’s really a Dresden green from the china," she says, pointing out the Meissen and Dresden on the mantelpiece. "I take the colours from things in the castle and use that as inspiration. It’s the lazy way."

The green theme is taken up in the silk chairs, covered in material copied from the petticoat of Queen Elizabeth I in a painting in Hampton Court, and in the muted green, blue and pink of the tartan carpet that guides the 20,000 annual visitors through the house. "I came up with the colours and Johnstons of Elgin made the tartan, which has been officially recognised as the family tartan, Grant of Ballindalloch," says Clare.

On the wall hangs a portrait of Clare’s forebear, General James Grant, even as a child in 1770 dressed in military uniform. "He was also a bon viveur and died the fattest man in Great Britain. He still wanders along the passage handing out drams," says Clare.

In the first-floor panelled dining room, which was decorated around the Dresden dinner service, portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte by Scottish painter Allan Ramsay look down on a huge mahogany table which is used to entertain the shooting parties that now bring in much of the castle’s income.

Next door is the working kitchen and nerve centre of the castle hospitality business where Clare works with chef Steve Murray and family cook Betty Cameron. It is also the place where she has perfected the 139 recipes included in her I Love Food cookery book published this month.

The meals in the book, which include photographs by Delia Smith’s photographer Simon Walton, reflect the estate’s natural abundance. There’s Ballindalloch venison casserole with apricots and chestnuts, roast Ballindalloch grouse and recipes for "using up" pheasants and stilton, and as the Aberdeen Angus breed was founded at the castle by Clare’s great-grandfather Sir George Macpherson-Grant in 1860, there’s Ballindalloch Beef Tournedos with a whisky cream sauce. Puddings and treats are there too, such as Bluebelle’s Brownies, named after one of Clare’s five dogs who ate a whole tray.

Like the castle, the book is a family affair. "We wanted it to be a bit different. There are favourite recipes, family photographs, prayers, poems and paintings, as well as information about the castle. And it’s the only recipe book around with a section for the dogs!"

Which is as it should be, for no-one goes hungry at Ballindalloch Castle.

• I Love Food, by Clare Macpherson-Grant Russell, published by Heritage House Group Limited, £20 plus p+p.

To order, telephone 01807 500206 or email:
enquiries@ballindallochcastle.co.uk

Ballindalloch Castle,
Banffshire,
telephone 01807 500206.

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