The House

Rathmhor is a traditional stone and slate house in Lynchat, two miles north-east of the town of Kingussie in the Cairngorms National Park. It has two kingsize and two twin bedrooms, sleeping a maximum of eight people.  A description of the rooms is given below, and you can click the links for a gallery of images of that room.  You can also click in the floor plans for these room-by-room galleries.

Ground floor: fully-fitted kitchen with electric range cooker, fridge-freezer, dishwasher and washing machine; dining room seating eight; shower-room; front and rear porches; tumble-drier in cupboard under stairs; large twin bedroom 1.  First floor: sitting room seating eight with wood-burning stove and 43" HD TV with Amazon Fire stick; king-size bedroom 2 with en-suite shower-room; small twin bedroom 3; king-size bedroom 4; family bathroom.  Free unlimited wi-fi.

Large walled garden; courtyard with parking for up to four cars and electric vehicle charging point.  Beautiful views south across Strathspey to the Glen Feshie hills beyond.  And for rail enthusiasts, the Highland Main Line runs only one field away, so you can watch trains go by from the front windows!

Rathmhor was extensively repaired and upgraded in 2017.  Work included reslating the roof, pointing, reharling and limewashing the walls, insulating the floor and loft and installing new bathrooms and kitchen.  A new renewable heating system was installed.  A ground source heat pump supplied from a 200m deep borehole in the courtyard runs the downstairs underfloor heating, upstairs radiators and hot water, and a wood-burning stove provides extra warmth in the sitting room.  This means that Rathmhor is lovely and warm all year round, even when the outside temperature falls below -10ºC, as it often does in the Cairngorms winter.  Rathmhor uses 100% renewable electricity.

Getting to Rathmhor

Road access is convenient as the main A9 Perth-Inverness road is only one mile away, although the B9152 through Lynchat itself is quiet.  Directions can be found here.  Lynchat is about 2½ hours by car from Edinburgh or Glasgow and about 9 hours from London.  Coming from further afield you can fly to Inverness Airport, about an hour away by hire car.  Lynchat is five minutes by car or taxi from Kingussie railway station, with direct trains from Inverness, Perth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and many other towns and cities.  You can even board the Caledonian Sleeper at London Euston at 9.15 in the evening, sleep for most of the journey and disembark at Kingussie station at 7.20 the next morning!

Your Stay

We hope you have a very comfortable and happy stay!  The house will be ready for you when you arrive, with freshly laundered Egyptian cotton sheets and fluffy towels, and will have been professionally cleaned.  Logs are supplied for the wood burning stove.  We'll send you information about getting into the house and using the facilities in advance of your arrival, and we have a housekeeper who lives locally and can help if you have any questions during your stay.

History

The original houses in Lynchat (‘field of the cat’ in Gaelic) were built by the local Balavil Estate in about 1830, although we think Rathmhor may incorporate parts of an older house, possibly dating from 1805.  Lynchat originally had five similar pairs of semi-detached houses in a line along the old Great North Road.  It has changed over the years, with some of these houses demolished, but Rathmhor is the least altered of the remaining original houses.