Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Musicker
11 High St
T
01700 502287.
Funky café-
cum-music retailer just across from the castle, with
delicious coffee, decent snacks and even better music,
courtesy of the rather ace jukebox and occasional live
performances. Friday jam sessions at 3pm.
Mon-Sat
10am-5pm.
Squat Lobster
The Harbour
T
07748 552761.
Housed in a
mid-nineteenth-century hut that used to be a refuge for horse
cabbies, this super chippie next to the putting green doles out
freshly caught fish of the day as well as mussels, whelks,
langoustines, and the eponymous squat lobster, served with
garlic butter (£5.95).
Daily noon-8pm.
6
Mount Stuart
Mount Stuart, 4 miles south of Rothesay •
House
April-Oct, phone for times • £11 •
Grounds
Daily 10am-6pm • £6.50 •
T
01700
503877,
W
mountstuart.com
Bute's most compelling sight is
Mount Stuart
, a huge, fantasy Gothic mansion set amid
acres of lush woodland gardens overlooking the Firth of Clyde, and ancestral home of
the seventh marquess of Bute, also known as Johnny Bute (or, in his Formula One
racing days, as Johnny Dumfries). he building was created by the marvellously
eccentric third marquess and architect Robert Rowand Anderson after a fire in 1877
destroyed the family seat. With little regard for expense, the marquess shipped in tons
of Italian marble, built a railway line to transport it down the coast and employed
craftsmen who had worked with William Burges on the marquess's other medieval
concoction, Cardiff Castle.
he
pièce de resistance
is the columned
Marble Hall
, its vaulted ceiling and stained-
glass windows decorated with the signs of the zodiac, reflecting the marquess's taste for
mysticism. He was equally fond of animal and plant imagery; hence you'll find birds
feeding on berries in the dining-room frieze and monkeys reading (and tearing up)
books and scrolls in the library. Look out also for the unusual heraldic ceiling in the
drawing room. After all the heavy furnishings, seek aesthetic relief in the vast
Marble
Chapel
, built entirely out of dazzling white Carrara marble, with a magnificent
Cosmati floor pattern. Upstairs, along with three impressive bathrooms, check out the
Horoscope Room
, where you can see a fine astrological ceiling and adjacent
observatory/conservatory.
here are a number of fine
walks
to be had within the vast grounds, ranging from a
45-minute stroll down through the woods to the seashore, to a more vigorous,
two-hour walk taking in the
Wee Garden
and
Calvary Pond
(the latter located at the
head of a small burn).
EATING
MOUNT STUART
Mount Stuart restaurant
Second floor of visitor
centre, Mount Stuart
T
01700 505276,
W
mountstuart
.com.
Mount Stuart's on-site restaurant is certainly worth
making a trek to even if you're not visiting the estate. The
majority of ingredients are sourced from the estate's
Kitchen Garden, resulting in scrumptious dishes like seared
west coast scallops with salad leaves in a chilli and
coriander dressing (£9.95).
Daily: May-Aug 10am-6pm;
Sept & Oct 11am-4pm.
Inveraray
he traditional county town of Argyll, and a classic example of an eighteenth-century
planned town,
INVERARAY
was built in the 1770s by the Duke of Argyll in order to
distance his newly rebuilt castle from the hoi polloi in the town, and to establish a
commercial and legal centre for the region. Inveraray has changed very little since and
remains an absolute set piece of Scottish Georgian architecture, with a truly memorable
setting, the brilliant white arches of Front Street reflected in the still waters of Loch Fyne.
Despite its picture-book location, there's not much more to Inveraray than its distinctive
Main Street
(perpendicular to Front Street), flanked by whitewashed terraces, which are
characterized by black window casements. At the top of the street, the road divides to
