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IT SOUNDS LIKE
the script for a feel-good film and
not a very believable one at that. Two Londoners with
no property-development experience decide to buy a
200-acre estate – complete with creaky Edwardian
house and crumbling outbuildings – and uproot to the
Scottish Highlands. Borrowing a million pounds from
the bank and putting themselves in hock to family
and friends, they live, day to day, on their wits and the
goodwill of others. Then, somehow, they turn their
gamble into a gold mine.
But this story is true. “Everyone said we’d gone
mad,” says Lucy Micklethwait of her and son Walter’s
2007 decision to invest their (and others’) life savings
in Inshriach House, a Scottish estate. “A lot of people
didn’t think it was going to work,” agrees Walter. “Some
said you need half a million in the bank if you take on
something like this, just in case anything goes wrong.”
The naysayers had a point. The purchase left them
with a huge asset, lots of debt and no cash. In their
first week, they couldn’t even pay for heating oil.
“We were standing in Tesco,” says Lucy, “wondering
whether we could afford a loaf of bread or whether we
should just have half a loaf.”
Moving into one of the estate’s modest cottages, the
pair created their own five-room home (kitchen, living
room, bathroom, and Walter and Lucy’s bedrooms)
while they converted the Edwardian house into
holiday accommodation for up to 17.
Their first paying guest, a restaurateur from
Edinburgh, saved them. He wanted the house for a
staff feast, arriving with a car boot full of dead piglets
and a cheque they used to buy oil. The heating went on.
Since those anxious beginnings, the Inshriach
estate, in the foothills of the Cairngorms, has become
a fashionable destination. Just a few kilometres from
Aviemore (and 56km from Inverness airport), it has
turned from potential money pit into a successful
business with plenty of guests, a travel-media buzz
(featuring in
The Times
, the
Guardian
and
Condé
Nast Traveller
) and even its own music festival.
The reason for its success? Unquestionably, it’s
Walter. An old Etonian (he winces at the elitist
connotations), he’s no hard-nosed financier, but a
33-year-old bohemian who wears hoodies, smokes
roll-ups and listens to folk music. He is, however,
also incredibly well connected – there’s no area in
PROPERTY
|
INVERNESS
FIVE YEARS AGO, A LONDONER (AND HIS MOTHER) BOUGHT AN
ESTATE IN NORTHERN SCOTLAND. AGAINST THE ODDS, THEY’VE
TURNED IT INTO A SUCCESSFUL, ECO-FRIENDLY BUSINESS
90
|
TRAVELLER
LAIRD
of the
MANOR
A N D R E W H A N K I N S O N
H E L E N A B R A H A M
S
Clockwise from
right
: the Inshriach
House estate edges
the Cairngorms;
this yurt sleeps
two in aVictorian
double bed;Walter
Micklethwait; the
Insider folk festival
takes place in June