Travel: Gleneagles

EXQUISITE dining and a warm welcome are par for the course at Gleneagles

I SHOUT: “Pull!” and an instant later the white clay disk skitters up into the clear blue sky.

John’s instructions are playing in my mind and I wait – and wait – until it reaches the height of its trajectory before squeezing the trigger. The disc shatters, with pieces flying off into the heather below. It’s the first I’ve hit and I feel elated. If the Apocalypse really is nigh and I have to hunt for my own food, at least I won’t be so terrified of firing a gun.

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For now though I have someone else to do that for me. As I break open the gun for John – one of the instructors at the Gleneagles shooting school – to reload with new cartridges, I can’t help wondering who brought down the wild mallard I had eaten the night before. It was the highlight of the degustation – the tasting menu – we had lingered over in Andrew Fairlie, the Michelin two-star restaurant that has camped in the heart of the Perthshire resort since 2001.

Later that morning, I get my answer as Fairlie breaks off from his day’s preparations for a chat. “I shot that,” he says. “Up in the Highlands a few days ago. Hope you enjoyed it.”

There are many reasons to visit Gleneagles, which despite many imitators still manages to retain its premier position as Scotland’s best-known country resort. But for many visitors from Britain and abroad, Fairlie’s, the only Michelin two-star restaurant in Scotland, is an irresistible draw. The tasting menu (eight courses plus coffee for £125) is a culinary advertisement for the glorious sea, farm and field produce in which Scotland excels.

The smoked salmon, langoustine and caviar starter was exquisite. But the carnivore in me thrilled more to the ballotine of duck foie gras and fig carpaccio that followed. More of the west coast’s finest arrived in the next course of crab and scallops with a shellfish broth. Three hits so far for Mr Fairlie whose portrait looms near the central table in his elegant, contemporary dining room.

The field was up next in the shape of hand-rolled semolina pasta with wild mushroom, pumpkin and truffle. Then came Fairlie’s signature dish – home-smoked lobster with warm lime and butter. The meat is extracted from the shell by hand, smoked for several days, then popped back in, in a painstaking process. During our chat the next day, chef was bemoaning ever so slightly the thousands of crustaceans he had had to prepare in the years it took him to perfect the dish, and added that it was there on the menu due to popular demand. I had to report it was worth all his effort, a sublime treat that has to stay.

The mallard arrived next – a bit of a chef’s special (now we know why) in place of the roast loin of lamb with ricotta and salsa verde on the menu. Two generous pieces of perfectly cooked medium rare breast and wing/leg, artfully arranged amid a pool of sauce and autumn vegetables. A Michelin-starred sprout, no less, and it wasn’t even Christmas.

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Just two dishes to go and both – warm epoisses (apple, fennel and fried sage) – and chocolate cremeaux with poire William sorbet – were of an equally high standard to what had gone before. One of the dessert chefs excelled himself by writing “Congratulations” in spidery-thin chocolate letters on the porcelain plate set before my daughter who was celebrating her graduation.

Given the quantity of food that had passed our lips that evening, we were relieved that it was only a short walk to our beds.

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Gleneagles is a hotel that uses the best of what it finds around it. Even the ESPA spa, which has recently undergone a major transformation, has treatments which involve being beaten (lightly) with a pouch of herbs culled from the surrounding land. The Source, a ritual foot-bathing using river-washed stones, leads on to two hours of bliss.

Then down in the cellar – again recently opened up to tours – one of the hotel’s sommelier team will introduce whisky virgins and connoisseurs alike to the glories of malt whisky. It’s a fun way to start an evening with a taste of iced Dalwhinnie (better than it sounds), smooth and rich west coast and Speyside malts and a smattering of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, the latter betraying the interests of Gleneagles’ owners Diageo. Best perhaps that the surrounding bottles of expensive wines – destined mainly for the tables of wealthy Russian oligarchs – remain untouched. At least the next day – although John might disagree – I was able to shoot straight.

THE FACTS

Rooms start from £215 and the resort is running a Kids Stay Free offer on selected dates until the end of March (0800 704 705, www.gleneagles.com, www.andrewfairlie.co.uk). A 45-minute shooting lesson (25 cartridges) costs £62 and The Source treatment costs £180. Cellar tours free on request.

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