For 99.9 percent of house owners, one can only imagine what it must be like to own and live in a beautiful castle. It must be true too that those castle owners can only imagine the opposite!
So that’s exactly what we do when we walk around the immaculate gardens and impressive stately rooms of Inverary Castle. Don’t we?
Of course, we’d need a few gardeners. Perhaps a chef, or two. Three, or maybe four cleaners. Would a butler seem out of place? What about a nanny for the kids? Then there’s the flat in Mayfair and the holiday home in Salcombe . . . can we really afford all that? I suppose we could always sell one of our islands, if times become a little hard . . .
Or, better still, why don’t we live in our own private wing and charge 100,000+ yearly visitors to have a quick look round and let them help with the up keep?
With over fifteen million Campbells worldwide, the house attracts many overseas visitors.
The kitchen displays a fine assortment of jelly moulds. Used to create sweet and savoury jellies. In those days the gelling agent was made from shavings of hart’s horn (hartshorn is the antler of male red deer) and the swim bladder of a fish. Mmmm, yummy!
Inside the castle shop, a woman customer is unable to get a signal on her phone. “Do you have free wifi?” “Yes” – a couple of seconds later, she checks, finds a connection, screams out a laughing “2-cheeses-go-rolling!” Oops. Mr S had forgotten to turn his hot-spot off.
We leave the castle and enjoy a spot of the wet stuff along the way to Glencoe.