The Best Places to Stay in Perthshire

Sir Walter Scott reckoned Perthshire was "the fairest portion of the northern kingdom" and he wasn't wrong. The region sits slap in the middle of Scotland — neither Highland nor Lowland, but a bit of both, with the Highland Boundary Fault running right through it. Drive north from Perth on the A9 and you can watch the landscape change as you go. Farmland gives way to forest. Hills get taller. Somewhere around Dunkeld, you've crossed an invisible line into mountain country.

They call it Big Tree Country round here, on account of the 200,000-odd acres of woodland and more champion trees than anywhere else in the UK. A lot of that's down to one man — David Douglas, born in Scone in 1799, who travelled the world collecting seeds and brought home the fir that bears his name. You can still walk among his Douglas firs at The Hermitage near Dunkeld, where the river runs through a wooded gorge below an 18th-century folly. It's a strange, lovely place.

There's history layered into the rest of it too. Scottish kings were crowned at Scone for the best part of a thousand years. Bonnie Prince Charlie stopped at Castle Menzies on his way south in 1745. Robert Burns wrote a poem about the Birks of Aberfeldy after a walk there in 1787, and you can still do the same walk today. Most of it hasn't changed much.

What makes Perthshire work as a place to stay is the range. Pitlochry and Aberfeldy are decent-sized towns with restaurants, distilleries and cinemas. Push west or north and you hit Rannoch Moor, Glen Lyon, the long shore of Loch Tay. Below are our pick of the places to stay — from exclusive-use lodges to one-room cabins for two.