Scottish castles to rent often look like corny film sets – all tartan, antlers and pine four-posters. Yes – I can see antlers on the website for Balbegno Castle, which came on to the holiday rental scene this year, but that's where cliche ends. Gothic ironmongery and knicker-ish ruffles there are none.
On paper, the directions to the castle (between Aberdeen and Dundee, east of the Cairngorms) look fine but fail to take into account how low-key the sign from the road really is – especially in fading light. Grrrr.
A smart welcome box is waiting in the rustic-luxe kitchen. Cheeses, chocolate brownies, posh crackers, olives, relish and Belgian chocolate. The cheese we set about nibbling, like a pair of mice, is Welsh. This is because Balbegno's owners (descendants of William Gladstone no less), have an organic farm in Wales. They also started Pedlars – best known for putting Keep Calm and Carry On on everything from mugs to blankets.
"The kitchen's Ikea, but I've seen most of the other items on the Pedlars website," says D with the authority of one who does her Christmas shopping online. The orange bread bin matches the waste bin, which matches a cake tin.
"Come on, let's explore," I say. Our quarters are in an 18th-century wing. Two floors, with four bedrooms upstairs and two down (the girlie single is quite my favourite in the entire house). An old pantry houses a games room, the first-floor drawing room is of classic Georgian proportion, the ground-floor dining room for festive roasts and the sort of breakfasts where someone has to get up and walk to pass the butter.
Bathrooms are in minimal supply – just one upstairs and a shower room on ground – but history (Gladstone family memorabilia), coexists with modern comfort (good beds, Bose sound system) and a sprinkling of Pedlars poster wit. Someone has had the discipline to let the place speak for itself.
This is a house of two halves, though. What we find next is what makes Balbegno unforgettable.
Through a heavy door off the entrance hall (more coconut matting here than in the average school), we find ourselves in the tower house, the original castle, built in the 1560s in typical L-plan. Tip tap, we mount the stone staircase. Brrr, chilly.
No wonder. Switching on a fantastic glittery light reveals a medieval hall whose stone vaulted ceiling still bears centuries-old heraldic decoration.
Atmosphere? You can cut it with a knife. We're amazed this bit hasn't been sealed off. Instead, we have the run, could light a fire, throw a party, dance on the massive table that runs the length of this hall.
Now we understand why one of the upstairs bedrooms feels so very different from all the others. It is accessed from the Georgian wing "next door", but is a couple of steps down from the first-floor landing, so is in fact in the original tower house. It's almost 300 years older than the rest.
"We need olive oil," says D crossly, back in the kitchen and the 21st century. "It would be useful to have the opening times of a local shop. And a vegetable peeler. And a potato masher." If they'd given it a proper test run they would have realised what was missing.
"I like the way they've slung a few good DVDs in a drawer," she says later in the sitting room, where we curl up beside a peat fire, in pinstripe-covered armchairs beneath portraits of men with aquiline noses. What's best is the way Balbegno is geared for modern-day revelry in a setting that oozes history. D sums it up. "It's simply an enchanting place."
