If you go looking for Hope right now, you won’t find it. I had quite a bit of trouble tracking it down myself recently, and I had a map. You have to plan ahead and be patient. Hope Lodge is the latest opening from WildLand, the conservation-driven and beyond-luxury hospitality brand founded by Danish fast-fashion mogul Anders Holch Povlsen, who is worth $13.5bn according to Forbes. He began buying Scottish land 20 years ago and now owns more of it than any other living individual.
Hope Lodge became the priciest hotel in the country when it opened in May, but recently pivoted into its autumn/winter schedule, becoming the kind of lavish private-hire location in which a Succession plot line would unfold. It’s the Brigadoon of Highland resorts, and you need to book now if you want to go when it turns back into a hotel at the end of April.
This being a WildLand property, there’s no signage for it on this remote bend of road at what feels like the very top of the world. That would be too vulgar. This is for the 1 per cent.
Every millimetre of the makeover of this 19th-century shooting lodge has been laboured over, with no thought for budget. A huge basement area with a bar, games room and events space has been excavated and developed to look like something from a Julius Shulman photograph of Los Angeles in the late 1950s. Cécile & Boyd, the South African design practice responsible for some of the loveliest safari lodges offered by luxury African resorts brand Singita, has created the sepia, buttermilk and grey, hessian-textured interior. Everything is impressive, from the heft of the dark bronze taps to the textile-clad walls, ruffles on the sheets and linen curtains that wrap around concrete showers. Everything appears and feels like it cost a king’s ransom, but also comes across as effortless. Are we still saying “quiet luxury”? It’s very that.
I arrived well after midnight by car. Flying to Inverness (the closest, most useful airport to Hope) from Heathrow involves either a punishingly early start or renting a car for the drive of more than two and a half hours after dark. That’s a shame, as it’s one of the most beautiful drives in the world. I got to savour the return journey in bright sunshine, but the rain-sodden way up was fraught with dodging deer, frogs and foxes.
After I’d dithered for ages in my exhausted state about whether a certain unmarked gate might be the entrance (it was), the night porter appeared. He showed me to my room, but left me with the wrong password for the Wi-Fi and without the biscuits he promised. I was too tired to care. I woke up bewildered, feeling out of sorts. You really need to arrive in the afternoon and take a tour before you settle in. It takes a while to get your bearings.
The aforementioned lack of signage makes you feel like a trespasser at times. To get to the space that houses the gym and the massage room (where I had a slightly weird experience when the therapist’s playlist went rogue, moving from loud folk music with Gaelic vocals to early Nineties skate punk with profanity), you head down some stone stairs, then make your way over a metal walkway. The passage is built into a tunnel over a subterranean river and under a bridge, as if leading to a supervillain’s lair.
Once you’ve made yourself at home, the mood shifts. Everything is exquisite. This is a place where you get whatever you ask for. More wine? Coming right up. A picnic for a hike to the beach before a cold swim? Sure. Conservation experts take you on tours along the river to look at fish leaping out of the current and to smell the citrus of bog myrtle leaves. There’s morning yoga and a sauna fired up in the afternoon. Lunches and dinners are staged en famille, and, with a clientele this self-selecting, you’ll get some great stories after the fourth glass of Chianti.
If I had to distil the appeal of Hope Lodge beyond the design and exclusivity, I’d point to the landscape outside and chef Andreas Edelbauer’s kitchen inside. The scenery in this gloriously unpopulated part of Britain is, to me, the most beautiful in the world. It’s lush and wild, mountainous and colourful, and punctuated with linear torrents of water and lochs.
As for the food: wow. Heaven is found in the taste of cherry muffins at breakfast and the lunch servings of Tuscan veggie ribollita stew and Crowdie cheese with squash and steaming-hot sourdough. This is what can be done when you can spend all day cooking, with the best ingredients available, for just a handful of people.
A dinner of barbecued tagliata steak, served family-style with roasted beetroots, flatbreads and the most perfect potatoes garnished with edible blue and pink flowers, was Last Supper-worthy. Most of what you’ll eat, whether grown, fished or shot, is from the owner’s estate. And every ceramic and piece of cutlery is gorgeous.
Hope Lodge is violently expensive – there’s no denying it – but you’ll pay the same for a room at a fancy hotel in London and be shamelessly charged for breakfast on top. The difference is in the experience. Hope is a nourishing memory that lingers. It shows what hospitality can be. It’s real luxury.
Doubles from £1,550, all-inclusive. There is one fully adapted room. Hope Lodge, Altnaharra Road End, Lairg IV27 4UJ (wildland.scot/properties/hope)