Tranquil - but please don’t imagine that, season over, we’re sitting back and idle. We have fewer visitors, of course – but as you’ll read below, Rose Cottage is full of builders, and hydro construction is flat out, while work has started with the new settlement at Achabeag, and the usual winter maintenance and upgrade work is in full swing...

This last season proved to be our busiest ever. That’s partly because of so many people about to help with these developments. And while the weekly holiday business has been much the same as last year, our events programme continues to grow. Together that means occupancy at its highest levels yet. We love having guests, so we're delighted.

Plan for better weather
Which prompts me to muse about when our holiday visitors come. It surprises and disappoints us how quiet we are in May and June – well known by West Highlanders to be much the best period to be here. With few or no midges, wonderfully long days, and the best weather – it’s a magical time.

Believe me – the records don’t lie. Ian Lamb, Ardtornish gardener, has been recording weather here for almost twenty five years. May, he tells us, is by some margin the driest month (an average rainfall of less than four inches), followed by June (4.5) then April (4.9). August and September get more than half as much again as May, with July somewhere in between. Yet our cottages and apartments are often empty for those perfect spring days...

Next year we’re planning to be more flexible with short lets. With many Highland visitors now wanting a part-week or long weekend, we’ll be offering Friday to Sunday and Monday to Thursday short breaks. Please consider that too.

If, as we hope, you feel part of the Morvern community, please keep an eye on our website. We post news updates at least weekly, on average. From feedback and web visitor traffic, we know that news from Morvern interests people well beyond this parish.

Winter newsletter time, already? Things have gone so quickly this year at Ardtornish – a sure sign that we’ve had another seriously busy season. Huge thanks to everyone who came to stay here this year - it really makes my day welcoming you to Ardtornish, filling you in with the latest goings-on in the area, sharing information on local walks & places of interest, and generally helping you to have a great holiday. It’s a sad day when the bookings go quiet over winter and the door of the information centre stays shut...

My biggest news is that I’m due to become a father in mid April - so keep an eye out for my partner Kirsty & me taking the little one for a walk in our 4x4 pushchair.

2012 will bring a number of changes to Ardtornish. We’ll be launching a new website, to include our new online booking system, allowing viewing of our full availability online, and the capacity to book a stay without having to email or call the office.

Many of our regular visitors have already reserved their holiday here in 2012. If you'd like to reserve your usual accommodation, or if you haven’t stayed with us before and would like to make a booking or find out more about Ardtornish, please contact me - by email on stay@ardtornish or telephone on 01967 421 288.

Rose Cottage is currently being completely gutted, before a large-scale upgrade, with a new bathroom upstairs, improved layout downstairs, new skylights, better insulation, and complete redecoration. The number of beds will be reduced from eight to six.

If you're a Facebook user, please remember to look up and "like" our Ardtornish page - updated frequently with photographs, videos & news from the estate. You'll find it here: www.facebook.com

All the best,

Following a busy summer, our engineers Hydroplan of Fort William and Wimbourne, contractors D A Macdonald of Lochgilphead, and main suppliers Gilkes of Kendal, completed the Tearnait Hydro scheme. The turbine was commissioned and handed into our care on the 18th August. It’s operating well and has been busy over one of the wettest autumns on record.

The wet weather was good for Tearnait, but wasn’t so handy for constructing the Rannoch Dam. The gorge where the dam is to go has been flooded on several occasions by more water than our by-pass system could handle. After long and frustrating delays, the dam base is now above the floodwater levels, and the contractors are busy raising the dam to its full height. We expect the scheme to be commissioned in the early spring.

By next summer, all hydro contractors should be out of the Tearnait area and peace should return to the glen. We want the Tearnait area to retain its wilderness feel, so plan to restrict vehicle access by locking the gate at Hillside. The track to Loch Tearnait will be for walkers, cyclists, riders and essential vehicles only.

A diagram of both schemes, with a map showing just where they are, is on the right - which you can see in greater detail if you download the files (the map download is a fairly large 2MB so please be patient when it downloads!).

However, there may be a further hydro development on the estate. We propose to build a run-of-river scheme on the Uileann burn running through the conifer plantation in the White Glen. More news of this with the next newsletter, and on the website.

It’s been a bumper year for Morvern’s most common mammal, the wood mouse (aka the long tailed field mouse). Not content with their usual habitat of wood and field, they’ve invaded the built environment as never before. Lochaline Stores has done a roaring trade in mouse-catching paraphernalia.

What’s a pain for humans is good news for our raptors. This summer I’ve had the frequent pleasure of watching a family of kestrels tearing about above the flats at Uileann. I’ve also had many more sightings of hunting hen harriers than previously - normally they appear briefly in autumn, but this year we’ve seen them throughout the summer. Could it be down to the cyclical abundance of mice and other small rodents? Another factor may be the new woodland enclosures in the White Glen. In the early years, as they get established, they’ll undoubtedly provide excellent hunting ground, and perhaps even breeding habitat, for raptors.

Autumn colouring has been a main feature of the planting of the Ardtornish Garden since the beginning. The contrast between the giant conifers in the background and the flaming leaves to the fore offers a dramatic contrast in late September and October. I’ve never seen ‘The Fall’ in New England, but can’t imagine it to be more vivid than this. The green of summer has lasted longer this year that usual because of the warmth and the rain. Sudden storms have ripped off the leaves, except the oaks, which are always the last to fall, as they are last to appear in May.

We enjoy them right on into November. Large branches have been blown off, and tidied up by Ian Lamb and Allan Davidson. The giant stump of the Norway Maple, which fell in the May gale, has become a sculpture in wood - the centrepiece of an area now cleared of the remains of Rhododendron ponticum and Edwardian hybrids. This marks the entry to the Main Rhododendron Glen. The photograph shows the fallen tree before the site was tidied up.

One of the pleasures of driving up to Ardtornish House is to look to the right at a lump of rock, covered with decorative plants, including autumn flowering gentians. In the 1930s a watercolour of a similar arrangement was painted by my father’s great friend, Sir John Stirling Maxwell of Pollok House in Glasgow. Then the gentians were mixed with Cyclamen hederifolium. We’ll try to get this combination going again.

Thanks to our lovely customers, we were nominated in TWO categories of the Scottish Restaurant of the Year Awards 2012 - for Best Scottish Rural Restaurant and Best Scottish Seafood Restaurant. After short-listing, we’re finalists (with two other establishments, both Michelin-starred) in the Rural Restaurant category. A huge thank you to everyone who nominated us. Mike and Lee have now gone, very happy, to India for a break - promising to return next year in time to open for Easter.

The Whitehouse Catering team has had a full autumn, with weddings, gatherings to celebrate significant birthdays, and supplying hampers to visitors. One delighted visitor recently wrote:

"Our family celebration was everything we could have hoped for - and more! There are lots of superlatives flying around the world among our family, and I have to say we all thought the catering from the Whitehouse Restaurant was sensational - exceeding all expectations. We were delighted with the house and everything it offered - the rooms are so adaptable, the garden flat dining room was superb when set up for the celebration buffet and dinner the following night. We loved the South Wing Dining room too - very intimate and cosy with the fire lit and spectacular views. It was such a treat being waited on by your wonderful staff, and the food was one gastronomic experience after another - all beautifully cooked and presented! Sarah and Claire and their assistants were absolute stars".

With that, it’s happy festive season from us all.