I'm a lumberjack & I'm OK!

Nice bit of firewood there!

It seems that even here in peaceful Glencoe we're not immune to a bit of serious phone hacking.
Luckily this particular bit of 'hacking' is all part of BT's grand plan to upgrade the telephone poles along the back road between the village and Clachaig. 

'Timber!'

Not before time if you ask me, most of them lean further to the left than Ken Livingstone. However, we're pleased to report that work is progressing well with no disruption to our phone lines so far....

Hello!....Hello!...anyone there?

Fundraising efforts begin at home!

Our next fund-raising mission here at Clachaig is to raise a minimum of £1000 towards the cost of a new people carrier for the Abbeyfield Care Home in Ballachulish. This new vehicle is vital for the home to continue to provide services for the older people in Ballachulish & the surrounding communities. Services provided include residential care, nursing care, intermediate care, sheltered housing with housing support, care at home, day care & a community lunch club.

Demand for these services is such that the existing mini-bus has driven 30,000 within the local communities over the past 2 years and with request & referrals growing a new vehicle is required to assist the older members of the dispersed communities of South Lochaber.

The first cheque for £152 on it's way to the Abbeyfield Care Home in Ballachulish - Thanks for those who took part in the pub quiz and the raffle. 

We are hoping to hit the target by the end of the year so when our staff pester you to part with your hard earned cash please buy a raffle ticket & help support this worthwhile cause.

We've gone Nuts!

You know how it goes, you wrestle with these blasted little foil packets and eventually the bag let's go and half the contents end up on the bar floor......until now.

So we've listened to our customers  - and their colourful language - and added a selection of their favourite snacks including Chilli peanuts & Wasabi peas for those who like it hot. They taste great and are the perfect accompaniment with a pint or two when visiting Clachaig.

Guaranteed the best imperialist titbit's since chaffinches earlobes, badgers noses, ocelot spleen & wolf nipple chips...So get 'em while they're hot they're lovely.

Brian!

Something new from Bruichladdich

Yes, we're in the midst of a beer festival, so here's news of a new drink for you to try, and, er, it's not an ale at all. It is in fact a gin. But no ordinary gin. However, it is quite quirky, and very Scottish, so fits the Clachaig requirements quite nicely.

Fist off, The Botanist Islay Dry Gin is from the Bruichladdich Distillery on Islay. Yes, a whisky distillery. And whilst we know all about beer and can wax lyrical on the subject for some time, we had to do our homework when it comes to gin.  That we did, and instead of regurgitating everything we learned about gin on our own blog, trying to edit the wording a little so that it isn't a direct copy, perhaps it's best to say take a peek at this short and concise summary of the Botanist on a gin blog (yes, they do exist!)

Next time you fancy a gin, forget that mass produced stuff in the green bottle that has the misfortune to share a name with that craggy faced, foul mouthed, f****ng chef who gets paid a fortune to advertise it as a consequence, check out the imposter amongst the malts on the 'top shelf' and order a Botanist Islay Dry Gin.

But don't delay! It's a limited edition and there's only 15,000 bottles available (and we have 12 of them!)

A tad breezy

Isn't summer fantastic! The weather across Scotland today is just incredibly horrendous. If this was November we'd be shrugging it off as a winter storm and looking forward to the summer. But for the last week of May it takes some believing. Always looking on the bright side of life, at least when it's blowing 80mph it's going to hard for the midgies to get you!

Right now the storm is still raging. We're missing a few slates, and we're watching the mountain ash trees outside the office move the grass as the trees swing from side to side. Our lovely straight tall silver birch has already toppled, narrowly missing Gordon's car (he moved it with seconds to spare). A really nice laburnum outside Oak Lodge has also gone, and there's a few more trees looking like they might be horizontal by the time the afternoon is out. Chainsaws at dawn tomorrow!

Elsewhere, the A82 closed at the NTS in Glencoe for a while - due to a fallen tree. Our back road to the village became a bit of a rat run as 2 way trunk road traffic tried to get past each other on a single track road. Fallen trees blocking that road soon put an end to that! All seems to be open again now.

And out on Loch Linnhe, with a clear fetch of water from the south west, the waves and the spray is quite spectacular. Just white. All over white. Absolutely howling!

After last week we thought that May's weather couldn't get any worse. How wrong we were!

Double Award Winning Clachaig Inn!

We seem to have done rather well at the recent 2011 Scottish Hotel Awards, winning not just one but two awards. To say that it's a pleasant surprise is somewhat of an understatement! And we're especially chuffed becuase to win anything at all, you have to be nominated by you, the public, our customers.

First of the awards is a coveted Design Medal for our bedroom refurbishment. We've been telling you that it turned out rather well for a while!

We wanted to refresh our Ossian Bedrooms, and give them a bit of a lift and a touch of that luxury feeling whilst at the same time retaining that traditional Clachaig comfort. The en suite bathrooms were completely gutted to make way for new baths and full height floor to ceiling tiling, whilst the bedrooms themselves got a sumptuous makeover with some very carefully selected wallpapers and new soft furnishings.

We do have to take some of the credit for the scheme ourselves. Interior Design was never something that we thought we'd excel at when we started out running an inn. But there again, neither were a dozen other trades and skills that you quickly acquire when you're thrown in at the deep end with a business to run!

However, we do need to thank Burns Design for pulling the pieces together from the scattered corners of our brains so well and turning it into a viable and successful project.

And the second award was a Commendation for Hospitality & Welcome. Reading through the feedback we receive, both through our bespoke in-house scheme, and on Facebook (with the exception of the guy that didn't like our green pea soup!) this Commendation should come as no surprise to our customers.

Clachaig is nothing if not based on the good old traditional values of a warm welcome. And in this regard we have to thank our staff who keep on making it happen, quite often when under pressure and in sometimes trying circumstances. A big thank you!

But this isn't the end of the story. No, in good Oscar acceptance speech style, we'll drag this one out a bit further yet. We've already had the confidence to continue with some of the momentum we've attained. There is of course the Childrens' Play Area, which judging by the number of we'ans having fun on it over Easter is £15,000 well spent. And then there's the rolling out of the soft furnishings through our Lodge Bedrooms, plus a more moderate decorative makeover in time for the season really kicking off. We get the feeling that it won't be long before the rest of the bedrooms are brought into the fold.

And that's not all... But you'll have to wait a bit longer for more news!

Easter sunshine - get your top off!

Fiddling on the roof

The difficulty in trying to mend a roof that leaks like a proverbial sieve is predicting a reasonably settled spell of weather to allow us time to fix it. So, after checking out the weather forecast for the next week or so we've taken a gamble and set to work. Fingers crossed for the glorious weather to continue, so far so good and hopefully an end to staff & customers alike tripping over buckets & basins every time we get a heavy downpour - not that rains that often in Glencoe!. 

Glencoe's lastest 'Munro' in the making

Easter holidays coupled with glorious weather in Glencoe means lots of thirsty visitors at Clachaig. We recently added a selection of traditional lagers from WEST Beer to compliment our extensive range of cask ales and they're going down really well - too well in fact and the empties are starting to pile up. I expect they'll eventually come and collect the empty barrels when they notice they've none left to fill for our next order!

Lashings of ginger beer.....Enid!

New for Easter is a cheeky wee ginger beer from those clever chaps at Williams Bros. We love it and at 3.8% ABV it is refreshingly, eh!.. ginger, so we think you'll love it too. That'll teach those cads at Crabbies!

See you at the bar folks.....unless you're all too busy with the Royal wedding of course.