Cluanie Inn, Inverness

Official site of Cluanie Inn - www.blacksheephotels.com

Official site of Cluanie Inn - www.blacksheephotels.com

Remote roadside inn that is more an expensive restaurant than an highland inn, the food is international with an emphasis on Asian due to the family running it. Guinness and a quad T-Bar for the beer lover, usual wines and spirits with a relatively small malt range. The bar is to the right when entering, counter immediately to your left, to the right is a seating area then down a few steps an area of bench seats and short tables. There is a more restaurant like room to the left as you enter. You will probably be meet and greeted and conducted to a table. Beers on offer were Innis & Gunn lager, Tennants, Isle of Skye Eilean Or and Glen Spean IPA, be warned my IPA was £7 a pint! Blue walls with random Scots subject prints including surprisingly for the highlands Robert Burns but fortunately no Bonnie Prince Charlie, Below the dado level is roughish wood stained a dark colour.

An isolated hotel with petrol station, the only habitation for miles around. The scenery is spectacular, though if heading west the approach is past the less than beautiful reservoir of Loch Cluanie, with its disfiguring tidemark. I arrived just prior to 11am, to find a closed sign outside but people clearly being served in the cafe to the left of the entrance. As I hesitated, the automatic front door sprang into life and almost begged me to come in for a beer, so I did. The bar is in a room to the right off the lobby, with two hand pumps the first things to be noticed. Both beers were from Orkney Brewery: Red MacGregor and Corncrake. I had a half of the former, which was spot on. The room has a change in level with some steps down to a dining area; in fact the area in front of the bar is also furnished with numbered dining tables. The young non-British barman was very friendly and helpful and although I was only stopping for a swift half on my way to the Great Glen, I can imagine that if staying at the hotel this would be a pleasant enough bar to spend the evening. Admittedly not very pub-like, but with beer this good, would I really care? Date of visit: 13th September 2017