A year or two ago, Shae read a book that featured Inverlochy Castle. She expressed an interest in visiting it when planning a trip to Scotland with our friends, but it turned out we could go one better – we could stay there!
Well, sort of. The Inverlochy Castle in her book is now known as Old Inverlochy Castle and is in ruins. However, in 1863 a new Inverlochy Castle was built and it’s that castle that’s now been converted to a hotel and is thus known as the Inverlochy Castle Hotel.
It’s part of Small Luxury Hotels of the World (also known as SLH) which, since June 2024, has had a partnership with Hilton. That means that you can earn Hilton points on a paid stay, plus you can redeem points and Hilton free night certificates to stay there.
We were able to stock up on free night certificates, so at the end of April we stayed there for three nights having booked two rooms – one for me and Shae and one for our friends. Shae and I then returned a couple of weeks later for another stay when riding the Jacobite steam train from Fort William to Mallaig (more about that in a future post).
Our stays at Inverlochy Castle Hotel were wonderful. The service was top notch, the hotel and grounds were beautiful and the location is perfect for exploring the area. Here’s a full review of our stays at Inverlochy Castle Hotel.
Check -In
We arrived at about 7:30pm, having spent a long day exploring things along the route from Falkirk to Fort William. We received a very warm welcome from Hadish who got us checked in for both our rooms.
Unlike many hotels where there are two or more check-in desks, Inverlochy Castle Hotel only has one.
In most cases, you won’t encounter an issue with lots of people checking in at the same time as the hotel only has ~25 rooms. However, if you do happen to arrive when someone else is already being checked in, one of their colleagues will greet you and start giving you a brief tour of the hotel.
While Hadish got us checked in, we took a quick look around the lobby. The hotel has won numerous awards, so they have those proudly displayed on a mantlepiece.
There’s a display cabinet with various Inverlochy-branded items, from decanters to whisky and more.
By the entrance there was a bucket of umbrellas for guests to use in the (likely) event of rain.
After getting us checked in for both rooms, Hadish gave us a quick tour of the castle and then showed our friends to their room which was in the castle building itself, before taking me and Shae to our room.
Small Double Room
Inverlochy Castle Hotel has two types of rooms that are bookable for a standard number of Hilton Honors points or with free night certificates. There’s a Small Double Room inside the castle building itself, while there are Small Walled Garden Rooms in the walled garden area of the grounds – a short drive or walk from the main castle building.
We booked one of each kind of room based on the award availability. Seeing as our friend is enchanted by castles, we let them have the Small Double Room so that they could say that they’ve slept in an actual castle.
I took a few photos of their room, although I didn’t take any of their bathroom. In addition to the double bed, there were a couple of armchairs, a desk, wardrobe and a couple of luggage racks.
They had an electric space heater, while on the desk there was a welcome amenity of some red grapes.
Small Walled Garden Room – Phyllis Knox Room
As I mentioned above, the Small Walled Garden Rooms are located in a separate building that’s a short drive or walk. By short, I mean about 30 seconds when driving or 2-3 minutes when walking.
We’d unloaded our cases when arriving, but if you’ve booked a Small Walled Garden Room then there’s no need to unload there. Rather than loading our cases back into our car, Hadish drove them down on a golf cart, with us following behind in our car.
The Walled Garden rooms are located in what was once the castle’s gate lodge. This was once a stable block which has since been converted into 6-8 rooms and suites (I’m not sure exactly how many there are).
At the front of the gate lodge there are several parking spaces. Each one has the name of a person listed on them which corresponds to the room that you’ll be in, so you park in the applicable space.
The Small Walled Garden Room we were allocated for our first stay was the Phyllis Knox room.
Rather than using key cards like most hotels, Inverlochy Castle Hotel provides a traditional room key.
Our room featured a double bed, with a wardrobe on the right.
One thing I wasn’t such a fan of initially was the bedding. It felt somewhat like plastic rather than luxury bedding and squeaked whenever we moved. It was warm the first night and I was having the hardest time getting to sleep due to the plastic feel. However, by opening the patio door to let some air in, the room quickly cooled down and I slept comfortably during the rest of our time there.
In addition to the wardrobe, there was a small side table and an armchair.
Similar to our friends, we had a welcome amenity of some red grapes.
Opposite the bed was another chair and a dresser, with tea and coffee-making facilities on top. There were two small bottles of UHT milk on top which was fine, but considering it’s a luxury hotel I was surprised that there was no mini fridge. That meant that once the milk was opened, there was no way to keep it refrigerated. UHT milk can be kept at room temperature before being opened, but is supposed to be kept chilled after.
You might’ve noticed a mirror mounted to the wall above the dresser. Although it’s a mirror, it’s also a TV which was a pretty cool feature.
All of the walled garden rooms are named after former employees of the hotel. On the wall of our Phyllis Knox room was a picture frame with information about her.
We thought we’d done a nice thing for our friends by having them take the room inside the hotel, but Shae and I ended up being very happy about the room we were in and preferred it to theirs. The bedroom area itself seemed to be a similar size, but we had the added benefit of a patio area right outside our room.
The patio featured a table and a couple of chairs, with a nice view of the walled garden and mountains in the distance.
It was also a lovely spot to sit in the evening as the sun went down.
In addition to having more space courtesy of the outdoor area, our bathroom was larger too. When entering the bathroom, there was the toilet and double sinks.
On a stand next to the toilet were toiletries which included some bath salts, with bottles of still and sparkling water on top.
Off to the right were a bathtub and large walk-in shower.
The shower had two rainfall shower heads, along with two handheld shower heads, and was one of the best hotel showers we’ve ever had. In case you’re not familiar with our site, Shae and I spent 7 years on a 50 state road trip, staying in hotels and Airbnbs. We moved nearly every week and stayed in hundreds of hotels; this shower was probably in our top 5 showers – that’s how good it was.
The reason they were so good is because of the power. There were two water controls for each rainfall shower head; one released water in the normal way, while the other released a separate jet of water more powerfully from the center.
Small Walled Garden Room – Isabel Smith Room
We returned to Fort William a couple of weeks later and stayed at Inverlochy Castle again. We were once again in a Small Walled Garden Room, although this time we were given the Isabel Smith Room.
This room had a similar kind of layout and similar sized bathroom. There was a slight difference from our first room though; the shower only had one rainfall shower head rather than two. The water pressure was just as amazing though.
I can’t remember if the Phyllis Knox room had one, but the Isabel Smith room had a Bang & Olufsen speaker for use.
The Isabel Smith room also had a nice patio area.
Breakfast
You get complimentary breakfast at Inverlochy Castle Hotel if you have Gold or Diamond status in the Hilton Honors loyalty program and are booking with points or free night certificates. If you book a cash rate, breakfast is included automatically.
There are two general breakfast timing slots – 7am-8am and 9am-10:30am. We took advantage of the later breakfast slot each morning; you don’t have to show up at exactly 9am, so we usually went at about 9:30am.
The hotel offers a hybrid breakfast system. There’s a small buffet area just outside of the dining room which features fresh fruit and other fruits (including delicious poached pears), smoked trout, seeded bread, cheese and meats, juice, cereal, yogurt and more.
Toast, croissants and pastries are also brought to your table.
You can then select a main course off the breakfast menu.
On our first morning I decided to try the West Coast Wild Benedict. This was an English muffin with sea vegetables, slow cooked poached eggs, peat smoked haddock and Dulse Hollandaise. I’ll admit that I was a little dubious about the prospect of eating seaweed and peat-smoked haddock with my poached eggs, but it was delicious!
It tasted fresh but salty and I ended up getting it a second time during that stay, as well as a third time during our second stay a couple of weeks later. That third time it wasn’t quite as good; the poached eggs were a little overdone and so the yolks weren’t very runny, the Hollandaise seemed to have broken and there wasn’t as much of the peat smoked haddock provided. Those first couple of times I had it though were wonderful.
On a couple of mornings Shae ordered the Full Scottish Vegetarian Breakfast. That contains field mushrooms, tomato, hash browns, potato scones, vegetarian haggis and eggs to your liking.
Shae isn’t vegetarian and picked it because she hadn’t noticed the Inverlochy Full Scottish on the menu. However, she liked it so much that morning that she ordered it again another morning.
Our friend ordered the buttermilk pancakes that comes with seasonal fruit, maple syrup and bacon. He loved them and thought they were among the best pancakes he’s ever had. Off the back of his recommendation, Shae ordered it during our second stay. She sadly wasn’t as big of a fan of them as Mark had been; it didn’t help that the bacon was far more crispy than we like.
Our other friend tried the Roux & Balvennie whisky cured sea trout and took advantage of the opportunity to make it Royal by having them add truffle to the top of it. She very much enjoyed this.
Shae and Megan also both ordered the organic Scottish oats brulee.
One thing I didn’t check is if you can mix and match the Inverlochy full Scottish and the full Scottish vegetarian breakfast options. For example, I’d be happy to forgo the black pudding and roasted flat cap mushroom from the full Scottish breakfast in exchange for the hash browns and potato scone from the vegetarian one.
Walled Garden Breakfast Hamper
If you stay in one of the rooms in the walled garden, you have an additional breakfast option. Rather than coming up to the main castle building for breakfast, you can have breakfast delivered to your room in the morning at either 7:30am or 9:15am.
Shae and I decided to try this out on the final morning of our second stay, partly out of curiosity for what it would be like and partly so that we could sleep in a little later before getting on the road for the long drive back down south. We picked the later delivery time of 9:15am and it arrived about 5 minutes early (it does say that it’ll be delivered 10 minutes either side of your allotted time).
We were fortunate to have beautiful weather that morning, so we sat out on the patio and enjoyed the sun and views.
It initially didn’t look like a ton of food, but it ended up being more than enough between the bacon and egg quiches, half baguette, charcuterie box, yogurt, granola, etc., not to mention the grapes from the welcome amenity.
The only slight downside with this was the tea that came in a vacuum flask. The flask had presumably been used for coffee in the past and so the tea had somewhat of a coffee taste.
The quiche on the other hand was incredible – the tastiest quiche that I’ve ever had. I could quite happily have eaten several of those rather than only one. It’s also a shame that it’s not an option at the main breakfast because I’d definitely order it there in the future.
Other Dining
Seasgair by Michael Roux Jr
If you’d like to dine at the castle in the evening, they offer a multi-course dining experience. That’s Seasgair by Michael Roux Jr and includes lots of delicious-sounding dishes. At £145 (~$195) per person though, we decided to pass on that.
Factors Inn Country Pub
A short walk from the hotel is Factors Inn Country Pub. We didn’t end up eating there, but it was tempting. Despite having a limited selection of meals, they sounded delicious, plus it’s effectively an all-you-can-eat meal as you can have unlimited fries/chips/frites, as well as an additional portion of the steak, fish or vegetables and halloumi for no extra cost.
Drinks
The hotel has an extensive range of drinks you can order, particularly Scotch whiskies. They had a full drinks menu, but it was too lengthy to take photos of each page. Here’s a photo of the drinks carts though to give a sense as to just some of what you can order.
We took advantage of that one night, having drinks by the cozy log fire – wonderful!
The hotel provided a large tray of mixed nuts and the largest olives I’ve ever seen. I don’t care for olives, but Shae, Mark and Megan do and they were apparently amazing.
Castle & Grounds
As you might expect from a castle in the Scottish Highlands, the scenery and grounds are beautiful. Even if you only stay there for one night, it’s worth taking a stroll around the grounds.
At the back of the hotel there are several tables and chairs overlooking the grounds and surrounding countryside, as well as the castle’s own loch.
The view is very nice even on a dreary day, but even better on a sunny day.
Sunsets there provide some stunning colors.
The view of the castle itself isn’t too shabby either.
The castle is lovely inside too. The sitting area/lounge feels majestic but without being ostentatious. There are many comfortable armchairs and couches to relax on, with a wood-burning fireplace on the far side.
There’s a separate drawing room (I think that’s what they called it) where afternoon tea is served.
With it being such a beautiful setting, one morning we got dressed up and did a photoshoot in various parts of the hotel and its grounds.
Amenities
The hotel doesn’t have amenities like a fitness room or swimming pool, but that’s not to say there’s nothing to do there. Besides, being in the Scottish Highlands there are lots of walks, hikes and other activities you can do if you want to exercise.
Billiards Room
Upstairs in the castle is a billiards room with an additional seating area.
Board Games
In the sitting room there are several board games for guests to play, as well as a chess set.
In the garden at the front of the property there’s a garden chess set.
Piano
Back in the sitting room, there’s a piano. The hotel has someone playing this for a couple of hours in the evening, but guests are also able to use it during the day and later in the evening. One of the other guests during our first stay was a great pianist and Shae ended up singing with him.
Boat
The hotel has a boathouse by its loch. If you’d like to go for a row during your stay, just ask for the boathouse key.
Follow the path down to the right at the rear of the hotel which leads you down to the loch.
It was a beautiful evening the first night of our second stay, so we decided to make use of this amenity. It was still early in the season though (our second stay was at the beginning of May) and I don’t think they’d expected anyone to want to row yet. As a result, they seemed a little cautious about us going rowing, presumably because they hadn’t had a chance to power wash the boat!
We decided to go for a row nonetheless. It was a little tricky though because in some parts the water was shallow and the algae was more than a little plentiful, so the oars got caught up.
Still, it was nice getting out on the water and you can get some good views of the hotel from down there.
Paid Activities
Inverlochy Castle Hotel also offers numerous paid activities, ranging from fishing to archery to wildlife photography day trips and more.
To give a sense of the prices, here are the prices the hotel shared via email ahead of our stay:
- Half day wildlife tour (four hours) for two guests – £325 (~$435)
- Full day wildlife tour (eight hours) for two guests – £585 (~$785) (n.b. these wildlife tour prices were the prices in 2024; I’m not sure of the cost in 2025 onwards)
- Archery – £130 (~$175) per person
- Clay pigeon shooting – £130 (~$175) per person
- Tomahawk throwing – £130 (~$175) per person
Inverlochy Castle Hotel Pet Policy
Inverlochy Castle Hotel is a pet-friendly hotel and they allow dogs in all of their rooms. The pet fee is a reasonable £20 (~$27) per night.
We didn’t bring Truffles with us on this trip, so she sadly didn’t get to experience a stay in a castle. When we originally planned this Scotland trip we’d expected to still be living in the US, but that subsequently changed and we moved to the UK. Some of the other properties we were staying at on the trip weren’t pet-friendly, so we had her stay with a pet-sitter instead.
Service
Service during our stays was excellent. Hadish who checked us in during our first stay was excellent. Dara (the assistant general manager) was fantastic too – very gregarious, friendly and informative. The service from everyone was always professional, warm, genuinely friendly and not at all snobby.
Housekeeping service seemed pretty good overall, particularly during our first stay. During our second stay, they didn’t replenish the toilet paper, tea bags or milk one time. One of the milks had been opened and half used, but rather than replacing it (seeing as there was no fridge in which to keep it fresh), they just placed it back where it normally goes.
The hotel does provide turndown service in the evening and a small box with a couple of chocolates is left on your bed.
Wi-Fi
The hotel offers complimentary Wi-Fi for guests. The speed was good, even out in the gate lodge where our room was both times.
Check-In & Check-Out Times
Check-in is from 3pm, while check-out is at 11am.
Location
Inverlochy Castle is only a few miles from downtown Fort William. There’s sometimes a lot of traffic heading in and out of town, so those few miles can sometimes take ~15 minutes to drive.
Ben Nevis Distillery is only 1.5 miles away, Glenfinnan Viaduct (of Harry Potter movies fame) is about a 30 minute drive to the west, the scenic drive through Glencoe is about an hour to the south, while the Isle of Skye is about a two hour drive northwest. Fort William (where Inverlochy Castle Hotel is located) is therefore a great place to be based to explore the surrounding area.
The original castle – Old Inverlochy Castle – is also only a couple of miles away to the southwest, next to the Highland Soap Company visitor centre. We stopped by the old castle on our day out to Glencoe, but there was some scaffolding up and fencing around the building, so we weren’t able to get up close.
Parking
Parking is free for all guests at the hotel. If you’re in one of the Walled Garden rooms, you’ll have an allocated parking spot based on the name of your room.
If you’re staying in the main castle building, there’s a parking area right out front, as well as additional parking spots down to the left of the building.
Cost
Seeing as it’s a luxury property in a high demand (and low hotel supply) area, stays at Inverlochy Castle don’t come cheap. You can find the latest room rates here with prices varying depending on which room or suite you want to book and at which time of year you want to visit.
For our dates, the Small Double Room and Small Walled Garden Room were both £650 (~$875) per night. That’s not a room rate that we’d ever pay, so thankfully we were able to redeem Hilton free night certificates instead. These were earned thanks to having several different Hilton credit cards in the US. By spending $15,000 on some, applying for new cards in other cases and upgrading some cards to Hilton Aspire cards (that come with a free night certificate each year), we were able to stock up on enough to cover all eight room nights we needed (three nights for us and three nights for our friends initially, then two nights for us a couple of weeks later).
If we’d booked with points, at the time of making our reservations it would’ve cost 105,000 Hilton Honors points per night. Since then, the standard room redemption rate increased slightly to 110,000 points per night.
Final Thoughts
We had a magnificent couple of stays at Inverlochy Castle Hotel. It’s such a beautiful castle and grounds with warm and friendly service.
There are a couple of areas for improvement. Having a mini fridge in each of the rooms would be very welcome, plus I’d much prefer different sheets to the ones that they use.
It was an excellent use of our Hilton free night certificates and is somewhere I’d be more than happy to head back to in the future.
Our Rating
Room = 4.3 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.2 / 5
Food = 4.7 / 5
Location = 4.6 / 5
Service = 4.9 / 5
Overall Value = 4.2 / 5 (it’s difficult to assess this because the cash price is higher than we’d ever pay, but it is a good use of Hilton Honors points and free night certificates)
Total = 4.48 / 5
Address
Inverlochy Castle Hotel, Torlundy, Fort William, PH33 6SN, Scotland
Saga 2025 Trip To London, Liverpool & Scotland – All The Posts
Here are links to all of the posts in this series:
- Saga 2025: Trip With Friends To London, Liverpool & Scotland – An Intro
- Saga 2025 Day 1: London – Police Station Hotel, British Museum, Dinner In Darkness & Abbey Road
- Saga 2025 Day 2: Liverpool – Cavern Club, Hard Day’s Night Hotel, Cocktails & More
- Visiting The Kelpies In Falkirk, Scotland By Day & By Night
- Saga 2025 Day 3: Falkirk – Kelpies, World’s Only Rotating Boat Lift & More
- Saga 2025 Day 4: Drive From Falkirk To Fort William – Castles, Distillery, Monument & More
- Hotel Review: Inverlochy Castle Hotel In Fort William, Scotland
[…] Castle Stalker wasn’t our final castle of the day though. For the next three nights, we’d be staying at Inverlochy Castle Hotel. Here’s a review of our fantastic stay there. […]