January Dreaming: A Luxurious Afternoon Tea at Skibo Castle in the Scottish Highlands

This post is a continuation of a sort-of-annual series, January Dreaming. Click for the series, and and here for the backstory. January dreaming is about recalling good times in warmer climes to help endure the shivering and malaise in this most dismal of the winter months.

As you may have read in these pages before, The Grill-Meister and I took an epic trip to Scotland and England last July to celebrate our 15th anniversary. Our friends John and Katherine joined us for part of the trip, and gifted us with something unexpected: afternoon tea at Skibo Castle. It’s a members-only club / hotel / sporting estate with elegant but relaxed lodging, plus golf, tennis, horseback riding, clay pigeon shooting and more—like a fabulous afternoon tea. (John has a friend from his high school in Switzerland who’s a member and made the reservation for us as her guests.)

Skibo Castle was the Scotland Home of Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie was a rags-to-riches robber baron, industrialist, innovator, anti-imperialist and philanthropist who gave away 90% of his fortune… he was many things to many people and one could write forever about him, with positives and negatives, but this post isn’t about the man; it’s about about our amazing experience with friends at his enormous and stately mansion in Scotland’s Eastern Highlands.

Skibo Castle was built sometime in the mid-1700s, and Carnegie saved it from disrepair with a major renovation after he bought it in 1898, spending over $2 million to triple its size to 60,000 square feet and building an entirely new facade, along with an indoor swimming pool and a lake.

The castle remained in the Carnegie family until 1982, when it was sold and became The Carnegie Club. It has an interesting history, and you can read more about it here.

We Visited the Castle on July 4

We were staying in Inverness, and our friends rented a car to make the hour-long trip. Signs told us to park at the golf club, and a big black van shuttled us over to the castle from there. It was enormous and imposing, and a brooding sky on a warmish July day made it look—and feel—almost gothic as we approached.

But the staff members were welcoming and delightful, and there was even a small recognition for our American Independence Day.

Authentic Afternoon Tea

We toured both the “house” and gardens, but let’s start with the tea. It’s what we came for, right? As a blogger, of course I took LOADS of pictures while we walked through the house as tea was being set up in several rooms.

The Tour Revealed Room Upon Room Upon Room

The tour was a bonus; we hadn’t expected it and the concierge had unlimited time for us, it seemed. She took us to all the public areas on the first and second floors, and was very knowledgeable about the history of the property and the family. The castle is huge! There were dining rooms and sitting rooms and anterooms and a library / study and all kinds of hallways and stairways and nooks, oh my!

O, the Gardens!

And then there were the gardens. O, the gardens! It was a warm and partly cloudy day, and the light was fantastic for viewing and photographing the lush, verdant spaces.

The gardens reminded me of the lines from Kipling’s poem, The Glory of the Garden: “Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues“. (Forgive me, Scottish friends, for the England reference; I know that ‘England’ does not mean ‘Scotland’; it’s just a fitting poem.)

Portraits to Remember the Day By

We had some fun taking portraits.

And some more fun, capturing the spirit of the day.

January Dreaming

That trip last July was epic, a trip of a lifetime that inspired several other posts (so far):

And there will be several more, particularly as we are doing our January dreaming about summer fun and reliving those amazing experiences like that wonderful afternoon tea at Skibo Castle with friends.

Stay warm! And – what are YOU dreaming about this January?

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