REVIEW | Our stay at the Ulbster Arms Hotel in the Scottish Highlands

[Disclosure: we stayed at the Ulbster Arms free of charge in exchange for this post]

For the October break this year, we decided to travel further north than we’ve ever been before: all the way to the very top of Scotland, in fact, where we stayed at the beautiful Ulbster Arms Hotel, in the village of Halkirk, in Caithness:

Halkirk is a picturesque little village which has long been popular with fishers, thanks to its location right on the River Thurso. Look at that view, though!

Pretty spectacular way to start the day, no?

We, of course, weren’t in Halkirk for the fishing, but for the fact that the Ulbster Arms is also a fantastic base to explore the very north of Scotland from; it’s very close to the route the NC500 takes, and has easy access to places like John O’Groats, Dunnet Head (which is the most northernly point of the British mainland), and towns like Wick, Thurso, and Scrabster, where you can catch the ferry to Orkney. We visited all of those places during our four-day stay in the Highlands, and I’ll be writing another post (or two…) about everything we got up to soon. First, though, let’s take a closer look at the Ulbster Arms itself, which I can honestly say is one of the nicest places we’ve ever stayed…

The hotel itself has 13 bedrooms (all of them en-suite) in the 19th century main building, which sits right on the banks of the river. We, however, stayed in one of the three lodges in the grounds of the hotel, which give you a little more privacy, while being close enough to the main hotel that you can still enjoy all of its facilities. 

Ulbster Lodge

Our lodge was called the Ulbster Lodge, and it has three bedrooms – two doubles and one twin – each with their own en-suite bathrooms, plus a communal area which includes a large sitting room, with an open-plan kitchen and dining area. Here’s what it looks like from outside: 

As you can probably tell from the photos, the lodge used to be a cottage in the grounds of the hotel (which started life as a private house), but it’s been modernized and renovated to a really high standard, both indoors and out. Each of the three bedrooms can be rented separately, or you can do as we did, and hire the full lodge. Either way, you stay on a bed and breakfast basis, so you can just pop over to the hotel for breakfast every morning (more on that later!). Here’s the living room and kitchen/dining area:

This is a lovely, cosy room, with a wood-burning fire, TV, and huge, squashy sofas, which were perfect to come back to after a day exploring. One thing to note here is that although the kitchen has a fridge and a toaster, this isn’t a self-catering lodge, so there are no actual cooking facilities. This isn’t a problem, of course, given that the hotel restaurant is right next to you, but if you do want to eat in the lodge, there are a few takeaways in nearby Thurso which will deliver to Halkirk, or allow you to collect.

Also on the ground floor there’s a twin bedroom with a huge en-suite bathroom. This area of the lodge has underfloor heating (which was really welcome on the colder days we had during our stay), and leads out to the large entrance hallways and staircase:

As I mentioned, all three bedrooms have their own en-suite bathrooms, and they also all come with TVs, tea and coffee making facilities, irons/ironing boards, and a large supply of fluffy towels and complimentary hand/body wash, which smelt absolutely gorgeous. Our master suite was huge, and had views out over the river, plus a super-comfortable bed, and a walk-in shower in the bathroom:

As these rooms are technically part of the hotel, housekeeping visit every day, so the place is kept spotlessly clean, with a constant supply of fresh towels and anything else you need. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Breakfast at the Ulbster Arms

Because your stay at the Ulbster Arms includes breakfast, we started every day in the hotel’s lovely breakfast room:

Here you can either order a cooked breakfast from the menu, or help yourself from the wide selection of fruit, pastries and cereals on offer. We found the full Scottish fry-up was enough to keep us all filled up until dinner time, but the hotel will cook anything you like, so you can have any combination of eggs, bacon, tomatoes, etc, and there’s also things like porridge, kippers, etc. We found the staff here so lovely and knowledgeable about the local area; they really couldn’t have done more for us, and we got tons of tips about what to see and do every day too, which made it the perfect way to start each day of our trip.

Dinner at the Ulbster Arms

As for how we ended each day, meanwhile, well, check out this:

This is the hotel’s lounge and bar/restaurant area, and it’s all flickering log fires, comfy sofas, and full bookcases: the perfect, cosy, Highland retreat, basically. We ate in the restaurant on all but two nights of our stay, and, again, the staff were just absolutely fantastic. Nothing was too much trouble for them – right down to making Max a “mocktail” just like the ones he’d had in Spain this summer, and allowing us to have a couple of the starters as main courses when there was something we particularly wanted to try, but we were still too full from breakfast to manage two courses. 

Everything here is cooked with seasonal, locally sourced ingredients, and even the children’s menu had tons of choice, all prepared and presented to the same standard as the adult meals:

(The food was all fantastic, but the mac n’ cheese was so good I had it twice: and I’d do it again, not gonna lie…)

Overall, the Ulbster Arms is a fantastic base for anyone driving the NC500, or just looking to explore Caithness, and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay there – so much so that I was really sad to be leaving when we finally checked out, and, on our first night back home, Max told me he couldn’t sleep because he was missing it so much. Same, buddy: same.

If you’d like to check it out or book a stay, you’ll find the hotel’s website here – and if you fancy a closer look, here’s a quick video I’ve just uploaded to my You Tube channel...