I don’t usually call out a hotel for excellence or quality of service – at least not publically – but I think in this case it is totally justified.

Altskeith Country House is a very small hotel sitting watch over Loch Ard, about 130 miles south of home. It’s not a cheap hotel by any means, but it is also not overly expensive either. The Girlfriend© and I stayed there on Sunday night, as we made our way back home after the Back to the Future excursion, and it was well worth the minor diversion required to get us there.

I have travelled quite extensively, and as a result I have slept in a lot of different beds, in many hotels and guest house all across the world. Some of them have been fairly sub-standard; a few have been very good; but most of them are just average. You go to bed, fall asleep, and wake up a handful of hours later feeling moderately refreshed.

Not so at Altskeith.

The bed we had was so fantastically comfortable, that folding myself up under the quilt at the end of the day was far and away one of the highlights of the weekend. It was like slipping into a cloud… that was covered in marshmallows. In fact, the quilt was so cosy that The Girlfriend© went out of her way to find out what it was and how much it cost.

After her research, she came back to me with ‘goose down’, ‘eight hundred thread count’, and ‘a regular retail price of over £1,000’. A grand. For a quilt! That’s a little too rich for my blood, but I can certainly appreciate the owners going to those financial lengths to ensure that sleeping at Altskeith is not just something you do to recharge your batteries, but an experience you can hold up and point to as really rather special.

Am I overselling it? Not really. You go there (Room 4, if you’re interested, although I’m sure all the rooms have been afforded the same attention). I dare you to come back and tell me different.

But as great as it was, I just couldn’t have that at home… I’d never be able to get up for work in the morning.