Glenspean Lodge Hotel

Glenspean Lodge sits in Roybridge, half a mile off the A86 between Spean Bridge and Newtonmore. The hotel is a traditional Highland country-house build, Victorian-era roots, two storeys of harled stone in landscaped grounds running down toward the River Spean, and works as a quiet alternative to staying in Fort William itself. Roybridge is a hamlet rather than a village, with a single pub (the Stronlossit) and a railway station on the West Highland Line.

The position is the main draw. Fort William is twelve miles west on the A86, twenty minutes by car, for Ben Nevis, the Jacobite Steam Train and the Caledonian Canal locks at Banavie. The Nevis Range gondola at Aonach Mòr (the UK’s only mountain gondola, running year-round) is six miles back along the road. North up Glen Roy is the National Trust for Scotland’s Parallel Roads site, where three horizontal terraces around the glen sides mark the levels of a former ice-dammed lake, the geological puzzle that took the 19th century four decades and a Charles Darwin paper to work out.

The hotel carries rooms, restaurant and bar; the bar is open to non-residents and tends to keep village trade as much as hotel trade. Loch Lochy and the Great Glen Way pass a few miles north for walkers and cyclists basing here for a day on the canal towpath.

Current rates and booking at the Glenspean Lodge website.