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From ‘Guidebook to Dunaire Castle – 2026’ leaflet, free on application at Gaoch Farm.
This spectacularly located castle on its dramatic headland was built by the McKell family in the fifteenth century and was added to and altered until 1716, when it passed out of family hands. Gradually the castle fell into disrepair and it can now be seen only as the ruins of the gatehouse (A on your map) and the tower house or keep (C on your map). A postern gate once existed (B on your map) to enable goods and wagons to travel up the cliffside to the site, but this was blocked off in the nineteenth century after the path crumbled into the sea during a storm. Access is therefore only by way of the steep steps cut into the headland and should not be attempted by those with insufficient fitness and mobility. Sturdy outdoor footwear is advised.
Archaeological surveys are underway to establish dating evidence for occupation of the site, believed to have been from Pictish times (approx. AD 300–900).
Please keep away from the edge, as the cliffs fall one hundred metres to the sea and are prone to weathering.
‘Bollocks,’ I muttered under my breath, barely listening to my brother’s list of all the things that needed to be done. ‘Bollocks to the lot of it.’ I was angry, mostly with myself, for absolutely everything. Not entirely without reason either, I’d been dumped and had taken out a bank loan on the same day, which would be enough to make even Pollyanna a bit glum.
Now, as a direct result of the bank loan and an indirect result of being alone and having nothing else more pressing to do, I was in Scotland. This wasnotimproving my mindset.
‘And once we’ve got the roof on and made it weatherproof we can see about the flooring. Honestly, Pax, people will flock to come and stay! How many people can say they’ve slept in a genuine castle? Look at the view!’
I looked. Sea. It was just sea. A big, bobbing wobbly body of water, which didn’t so much look picturesque as remind me that I’d meant to join the gym and not got round to it. If I turned around I could see the coastline of this part of Scotland running off into the distance like a chewed crust. It would probably look pretty, beautiful even, to someone not staring down the barrel of a future as a single woman up to her knees in threatening letters from Barclays.
‘Bollocks,’ I said again. ‘I’ve no idea why I ever listen to you, Lenny.’
Lennox leaned back against the wall. Little flakes of crumbling mortar rained down around him as he did so. ‘Dunaire Castle isour history!’ He flung out an arm, banged his hand on the wall and stared sadly down at his grazed knuckles. ‘Our family built this place. We owned it once, and now we own it again.’
‘We owned it when it was a working castle! Soldiers and kilts and… huge kitchens turning out roasted oxen. Now it’s just a bunch of falling-down walls. We could have bought a derelict cottage in Walthamstow if we wanted falling down walls.’
‘Ah, but we couldn’t turn a derelict cottage into a hotel, could we?’ Lenny was irrepressible when he was excited. All I could do was hang on and go for the ride.
I gazed back out over the black sea. Large clouds were scudding towards us from the horizon, not fluffy innocent little summer clouds, but big dark ones that meant business. ‘I still don’t know why I listen to you.’ I did know, of course. A generalised sense of guilt will make you behave unwisely.
I got a beaming smile in return. ‘Because I have charisma, and between us we could raise the money. You’ve got to admit it though, Pax, it’s a cracking place for a hotel.’
I revolved slowly, taking in the fallen walls, the windswept nature of the headland, the pathetic row of grey stones standing two rows high that marked the foundations of the long-gone kirk and, above all, the vision of my brother, six-feet-three of Irn Bru-fuelled idiocy. The only ‘cracking’ things around here were the walls and my mental state.
The remains of the tower house dominated the centre of the site, standing like one remaining tooth in a grey-gummed mouth with the site of the old kirk teetering on one edge of the headland. The rest of our purchase was wind-scoured grass and mud. These were also grey. A partly collapsed wall ran around the whole clifftop, serving solely to show where the land ended. ‘Ruins’ did not do it justice. ‘Post-apocalyptic’ was nearer the mark.
Lennox was still beaming. ‘Bollocks,’ I said yet again, but with slightly less venom this time. Beneath us, the sound of waves denigrating the rock of the headland boomed in the chasms and cracks as seabirds swung. An empty bottle that hadonce held cheap wine rolled steadily towards the drop and then back with an oddly musical sound as the wind toyed with it. The place had a lonely and desolate feel that did not inspire me with ‘successful hotel’ vibes.
‘Did they ever find out what happened to that archaeological dig that vanished from here?’ I asked idly, watching the bottle rotate over the tussocky grass. ‘I mean, four people disappeared – it’s basically a TV series waiting to happen.’
It had certainly occupied a good deal of the time I’d spent being interviewed by the bank manager about my loan. ‘You’ll have to take out life insurance on the loan, in case you disappear without trace,’ he’d said, with a certain amount of hand-rubbing glee. ‘Like those archaeologists. There might be a serial killer on the loose and how would we get our money back if you get murdered?’
Honestly, I don’t know how he achieved managerial status, because it wasn’t based on his consistent positive attitude.
Lenny was sucking his bruised hand. He leaned slightly to look over the remains of the headland wall at the drop down to the water. ‘The police think they went over the edge,’ he said vaguely, as though the mysterious disappearance of an entire archaeological team was merely a matter of academic interest. ‘They vanished during a really bad storm and there was no sign of any foul play. And,’ he added more cheerfully, ‘it meant that the price went down. We got the site for a snip. Nobody wanted to buy somewhere four people had fallen to their deaths.’
I looked again at the desolate outcrop, peppered with seagull droppings and random bits of fallen wall. ‘Lenny,’ I said steadily. ‘It was overpriced at “a snip”. There’s no McDonald’s for thirty miles unless we’re talking about random members of the clan, and the nearest village is twelve miles away. Even the sheep don’t hang around.’
‘Another reason why it was cheap.’
The dark clouds had swept further in towards the land and begun to muster above us, in a grimly determined way. We were going to get wet, the clouds said, even if they had to jump up and down on our heads to make it happen.
‘So you made us buy back our old family heritage just because it wascheap?’
‘And so we can turn it into a hotel.’ Lenny waved expansively again towards the tip of the headland, beyond which the irritated ocean scratched at the coastline like nails at a flea bite. ‘I mean, look at that view.’
As the view, which seemed to be all that the place had going for it, was obscured by the first squall of rain blowing in in a great veil of sudden damp, my mood did not improve. ‘Let’s get under cover,’ I said. It was habit, organising my older brother. Lenny was full of spontaneous ‘good ideas’ – like buying back the piece of land that had belonged to our family, the McKells, after several hundred years – but he couldn’t be trusted to behave sensibly when faced with a broken washing machine or, indeed, rain.
‘There isn’t much shelter.’ Lenny looked around as though he’d never seen the place before. ‘A few doorways, maybe.’
The rain was cold. It smelled of its recent travels over the sea and made a hissing sound as it hit all the fallen masonry that scattered the site as though a giant had built a rockery. Much of the rain bounced. I stared across towards the main body of land off which the headland jutted and where our cars were parked in a farmer’s field, half a mile of vertiginous climb and several flights of steps away. ‘We should have brought a tent.’
