The stunning and spacious Alt Na Lairage house sleeps up to ten in the utmost of luxury and is available to hire for Hogmanay; Arrive Friday 30th December, depart Tuesday 3rd January, was £2400, now only £1900.

Contact us on 0845 094 9630 if you are interested in these amazing offers.  It’s not too late to get out of the city for this year’s festive season!

Booking Link

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We have a variety of dates available.  Use the Availability checker to make a booking or check out our special offers page for more information.

Read more about winter at Ardlui.

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Hi Barry,

We have arrived home to California and I wanted to thank you again for our wonderful stay at Ardlui Retreat. We had a great time together as a family and your beautiful home held us in a very memorable way. It had everything we needed and them some. The spaciousness allowed us to be together in a very enjoyable way and all the amenities for young children made a world of difference. We appreciate all your kindness and care, especially during the exciting storm and subsequent electrical outage. The candlelight dinner and challenges without power were actually quite fun, and it was good to see how we all rallied. I was so grateful when the power came back on the next day, as we were then ready for comfort and ease.

I still feel full with the very green and picturesque, rugged beauty of Scotland. I loved all the water – it was everywhere – running in streams down all the hillsides, dripping from the sky, rushing in the rivers and waterfalls, pooling in the numerous lochs, and churning in the ocean. All the castles were a window to the past of the culture of some of our ancestors. The stone houses seemed as if they grew out of the earth and the sheep and highland cows were such a natural part of the landscape. I enjoyed all our family dinners in the elegant dinning room and I loved our afternoon family boat ride, hike and lunch – all with no rain! When I saw the backpackers that day, I was very grateful that we were not staying in tents! May seemed like a peaceful time of year to be on Loch Lomond – without all the noisy speed boats, jet skis and crowds of July and August. I will treasure our special family gathering for years to come.

The best to you and your family and thank you again for your wonderful hospitality.

Sincerely,

Karen Gillies

One of our guests caught this whopper straight off the jetty last week….

Ideal fodder for our BBQ Hut!

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’re offering:

• a three night stay in one of our loch lomond log cabins.  They sleep up to 6 people with a double, twin and fold down bed configuration).
• Unlimited access to the hot tub room and Finnish BBQ hut
• a BBQ party pack consisting of wine, beer and a selection of meat from our favourite local butcher.

To enter, all you need to do is fill in the form and provide your contact details.  We’ll draw the winner’s name out of the hat at noon on the 28th February and will contact the lucky winner ASAP to sort out the details.

Whilst our guests can stay in the utmost of luxury in one of our fantastic Loch Lomond Lodges, it might be of interest to look at what the origins of the log cabin actually is.  Check out this excellent information from Wikipedia:

Historically log construction has its roots in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Although their origin is uncertain, the first log structures were probably built in Northern Europe in the Bronze Age (about 3500 BC). By the time Europeans began to settle in North America, they had a long tradition of using logs for houses, barns, and other outbuildings in the Scandinavian countries, Germany, Northern Russia[2] and Ukraine[3]

By stacking tree trunks one on top of another and overlapping the logs at the corners, people made the “log cabin”. They developed interlocking corners by notching the logs at the ends, resulting in strong structures that were easier to make weather-tight by inserting moss or other soft material into the joints. As the original coniferous forest extended over the coldest parts of the world, there was a prime need to keep these houses warm. The insulating properties of the solid wood were a great advantage over a timber frame construction covered with animal skins, felt, boards or shingles. Over the decades, increasingly complex joints were developed to ensure more weather tight joints between the logs, but the profiles were still largely based on the round log.

The Wood Museum in Trondheim, Norway, displays fourteen different traditional profiles, but a basic form of log construction was used all over North Europe and Asia. Early settlers used such methods of log building in North America. It became a popular form of construction for pioneers’ settling in the far north and the more mountainous parts of United States and Canada, where winter conditions were often extreme.[4]

In the present-day United States, settlers first constructed log cabins in 1638. Swedish settlers in New Sweden (present-day Wilmington, Delaware) used log structures. Later German and Ukrainian immigrants also used this technique. The Scots and Scots-Irish had no tradition of building with logs, but they quickly adopted the method. The first English settlers did not widely use log cabins, building in forms more traditional to them.[1] Few log cabins dating from the 18th century still stand, but they were not intended as permanent dwellings. Possibly the oldest surviving log house in the United States is the C. A. Nothnagle Log House (ca. 1640) in New Jersey. When settlers built their larger, more formal houses, they often converted the first log cabins to outbuildings, such as chicken coops, animal shelters, or other utilitarian purposes.

When cabins were built with the intention of applying siding, the logs were usually hewed on the outside to facilitate the application of the siding. When logs were hewed on the inside as well, they were often covered with a variety of materials, ranging from plaster over lath to wallpaper.

We’re practically full this weekend, with lots of people looking forward to a lovely Loch Lomond Winter Break so we’ve  brought in the heavy machinery to make sure our guests can arrive and depart safely.

Have you noticed the wind blowing leaves off the trees recently? It doesn’t even seem long at all since our self catering guests were cooling off by jumping into Loch Lomond from our own private pontoon.

Pretty soon winter and the shorter days will be upon us but whilst a lot of birds will be flying South for the winter, Ardlui Retreat will be remaining open throughout the season.  In fact, November is already shaping up to be our busiest winter month ever!

Ardlui Retreat on a crisp winter’s morning is a joy to behold.  Fresh, invigorating, relaxing and above all peaceful.

Don’t worry about the cold – all of our fabulously appointed self catering accommodation is built to the highest standard, is fully insulated (complete with double glazing) and after a refreshing day outdoors provide the perfect retreat for a cosy night in.

If you’re feeling adventurous, venture out to the Finnish BBQ Hut to cook your dinner and then round off the day enjoying a relaxing, revitalising soak in our hot tub room.

Check out our booking page for more information.