It’s said there are some 700,000 hotels across the world: tiny beachside B&Bs, five-star palaces, places that charge by the hour. They come and go — the hotel business is a capricious one — and only a handful have a name anyone knows. There’s Claridge’s, the Savoy. Paris has the Ritz, New York has the Plaza. And 60 miles north of Edinburgh, on roads that cut under a woodland canopy and past hillsides peppered with grinning rocks, Perthshire has Gleneagles.
It’s a hotel, but it feels like a village — or what they cheerfully call a playground. A five-star one. There are the rooms (205 at last count, plus 28 suites), the restaurants and bars (11), the golf courses (3). There’s a spa, shooting and fishing, somewhere to throw axes. There’s a wood-panelled arcade, selling everything from glittering bangles to knitted backgammon boards: you might come empty-wristed and leave with a Rolex, or arrive as a couple and wave goodbye with a ring on the finger. And then there is the history.
