Wednesday, November 23, 2016

December in Dornoch

The nights draw in, the log fire beckons and we look forward to crisp frosty walks on the beach. Time to think about the Festive Season and Christmas shopping. With over 20 independent shops to choose from and free parking, Dornoch is an ideal place to enjoy the experience!

We have a special Late Night Shopping event on Thursday 1st December, with shops and eateries open till 8pm.  Many shops are offering discounts that evening and serving complimentary seasonal goodies.

On 5th December the community holds the St Andrews Fair from 10-4, with a craft fair and Santa's Grotto in the Social Club, carols in the Cathedral and the Christmas lights are switched on. All the shops and restaurants take part in this annual Christmas Bazaar.

A special Christmas Community market is being held for the first time, on Tuesday 20th December from 9:30 - 1:30 in the Social Club - with local craft and produce for sale.

Links House at Royal Dornoch offers a sumptuous Sunday Lunch menu, prepared by award winning chef Jon-Paul Saint.

We are looking forward to welcoming visitors for our 3 days of New Year Celebrations centred on the famous Dornoch Hogmanay Street Party with the Red Reel Ceilidh Band, a lone piper at midnight on the Castle ramparts to herald in the New Year and a fabulous Fireworks Display. Check out our late availability page for acccommodation deals.

For More Information Go Here: December in Dornoch


December in Dornoch posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Christmas Shopping in Dornoch

Get into the festive spirit and start your Christmas Shopping in Dornoch on Thursday 1st December when shops and eateries are open till 8pm.  Kingcraig Fabrics will welcome you with wine and nibbles as well as are offering a 10% discount and free entry to a raffle with all purchases (for example handmade cards, scarves, throws & bags).  Staff in Mitchells Chemist will be sporting their Christmas jumpers and offering mince pies and coffee while you browse their gifts including Beauticology products for under £5. A free sample of Bruadar can be enjoyed at the Carnegie Whisky Cellars, with gifts ranging from £3.95 for miniatures to a Dalmore Gift Set at £64.95.

At Gordon House there is 20% discount on all items, including coasters, mugs, candles, jewellery and paintings -  and a great stop for coffee and cake. The Dornoch Bookshop is a fantastic place to browse at any time of year! A visit to Coast Candle Co awakens the senses, with a range of hand poured fragrant candles in all shapes and sizes, with a 10% discount. Mulled wine and sweet treats will be served.

Be sure to visit the Retail Park where Simply the Best has a variety of Fair Trade gifts from Angels at £4.99 to a chess set at £69.99. Why not pick up your real Christmas tree from the Dornoch Garden Centre?

For unusual and imaginative gifts made by local artists, ranging from Harris Tweed bookmarks at £4.20 to a Lopi Hood Sweater at £70, visit Scots Corner. Don’t forget a present for your pet at That Really Good Pet Shop, and a range of cushions, walking sticks and jewellery at Budding Genius. Enjoy a glass of bubbly or mulled wine with nibbles at Aspen Spa, while you check out their range of quality beauty products (Vita Liberata, Delilah, Voya, Image & Skinade), all of which will be discounted on the night!

No trip to Dornoch would be complete without a visit to Jail Dornoch, which offers a superb selection of unique Scottish gift ideas, jewellery accessories, luxurious cashmere and quality country wear and its sister shop Country Interiors, which is an Aladdin’s cave of beautiful decorative objects, gifts, soft furnishings and furniture.

Why not make a day of it and book into Links House for afternoon tea before you start your shopping? They also have an exclusive range of tweed products in their own tweed for that special gift.  Relax after your shopping in the Carnegie Tea Room with mulled wine and mince pies and don’t forget to pick up some great Scottish food from their deli section. Round off the night with a meal at The Eagle Hotel or sample the new gin cocktails at the Dornoch Castle Hotel.

To help plan your shopping trip, check out the suggested range of gifts on offer, sorted by price.

For More Information Go Here: Christmas Shopping in Dornoch


Christmas Shopping in Dornoch posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

The Great British High Street Judges visit Dornoch on Friday 18th November!

"The Great British High Street supports those working to revive, adapt and diversify high streets. Not for profit and government funded, we aim to provide resources for high street regeneration and celebrate innovative work going on in high streets across Britain."

We are looking forward to hosting the judges of the Great British High Street awards this Friday.

They will arrive on Thursday night and experience a Gin Tasting session at the Dornoch Castle Hotel where they will then spend the night.

The next day they will have a tour of the town and take in the Carnegie Tea Room whilst enjoying coffee with members of staff from the Royal Dornoch Golf Club and the Tearoom itself before going to the Visitor Centre to meet with staff and then heading over the Carnegie Whisky Cellars to meet with members of staff from the Whisky Cellars, the Dornoch Castle and Links House.

After that they will visit Historylinks Museum, the Jail DornochCoast Candle, Kingcraig Fabrics, the Dornoch Bookshop and the Eagle Hotel before having lunch at Gordon House.

There is much much more to show them in Dornoch of course,  but in the short time they have here, this tour will give them a good idea of what Dornoch has to offer: independent shops, great food and entertainment, top class accommodation and a fantastic new Visitor Centre.

The winner is chosen by taking into account a combination of the outcome of the judges visit and the public vote. The voting closes at midnight on Friday night (so still a few days left to vote!)

The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on the 12th of December. Fingers crossed for Dornoch!

 

Source Here: The Great British High Street Judges visit Dornoch on Friday 18th November!


The Great British High Street Judges visit Dornoch on Friday 18th November! posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk

MP Paul Monaghan supports Dornoch’s campaign to win Great British High Street awards.

Dornoch has been shortlisted in The Great British High Street Awards, which celebrates the great work that is being done to revive, adapt and diversify the nation’s high streets. It is one of a number of initiatives to help champion high streets as the cornerstones of the community.

Local Councillor Jim McGillivray and Lou Rollason from DACIC (Dornoch Area Community Interest Company) were pleased to welcome Dr Paul Monaghan, MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, to Dornoch last Sunday. He got the chance to see the new Carnegie Courthouse and Visitor Centre during his visit. Dr Monaghan has been very supportive of Dornoch’s campaign to win the 'Rising Star' Category of the Great British High Street Awards and has said “I am delighted that Dornoch has reached the final and will certainly do all I can to help encourage votes.”

Dornoch’s campaign to win is nearly at an end and the Great British High Street judges will be visiting this week. They are staying at the Dornoch Castle Hotel and will be taking part in a Gin Tasting event on Thursday night. On Friday, the judges will get the chance to meet with local businesses and soak up the atmosphere of the town. Representatives from DACIC will travel to London for a ceremony on the 12th of December where the winners will be announced.

If Dornoch wins, they will get £10,000 towards further improving their High Street and visitor experience. Businesses will also receive expert training from Google’s digital taskforce and a trip to Twitter UK’s London office to boost their social media skills.

Jim McGillivray says “The Dornoch renaissance continues onwards and upwards.  We never envisaged when we started out on the 2013 HIE Masterplan that so many valuable initiatives would emerge.  To reach the last 3 of this part of the Great British High Street Competition is an achievement in itself, and we can only hope that, as the only Scottish representative in the final, we continue to get as much support as possible and the Judges see Dornoch at its very best on Friday”.

Please continue to vote for Dornoch at: www.thegreatbritishhighstreet.co.uk/finalist-rising-star. One vote per email address per day until the 18th November.

Learn More Here: MP Paul Monaghan supports Dornoch’s campaign to win Great British High Street awards.


MP Paul Monaghan supports Dornoch’s campaign to win Great British High Street awards. posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

PINEHURST LIVING MAGAZINE write fantastic article about Dornoch

Royal Dornoch Story by Jim Moriarty.

It was The New Yorker’s Herbert Warren Wind who, in the 1960s, took to reminding footloose Americans about the forgotten wonders of Royal Dornoch, a playground that comes blasphemously close to being the soul of a tiny Scottish town an hour’s journey up the A9 from Inverness. It’s a drive dotted with North Sea oil rigs on one side and flocks of sheep and celebrated distilleries on the other. Inverness is the gateway to the Highlands, the city where the rondello was invented — a stringed instrument designed as an improvement on the violin but which was, in tonal quality, roughly the equivalent of the bagpipes being an evolutionary advancement over the French horn. For golfers, especially American golfers, Dornoch has never lost that sense of romance, far enough in the distance to be an ideal, yet not so remote as to be unattainable. It’s the hometown of Donald Ross, the man who grew up on St. Gilbert Street but wound up scattering bits of his homeland across America like Johnny Appleseed. To hear some talk about it, you’d think Dornoch was as hard to reach as Ice Station Zebra, though the town is only about a five-hour drive from Glasgow. In the states, eight college kids in a car will drive three times that distance on Spring Break to reach a beach in Florida they’ll forever associate with Jell-O shots. It’s hard to imagine a town being remote when its main intersection has a pair of painted stalls reserved for tourist buses.

In 2016, Dornoch marked its 400th anniversary of golf. Well, four centuries since the game’s existence there appeared in a document. Only St. Andrews and Leith predate it. In 1616, Sir Robert Gordon, in his capacity as tutor to the 13th Earl of Sutherland, turned in an expense report seeking reimbursement for, among other things, “My Lord’s Golf Clubs and Golf Balls — £10 and £12”. Today the bean counters would kick that one back but, apparently, Gordon was able to get it past ye olde green eyeshades. Construction on the Dornoch Cathedral was begun in 1224, and from its completion until the Reformation in the 16th century a bond existed between clergy in St. Andrews and Dornoch. If they were playing golf in one, they were probably swatting it around in the other, too. Four hundred years, plus or minus, seemed excuse enough to throw a party.

One of the charms of Dornoch is that it does big things in a small way. The cathedral has been sacked, burned and used to stable horses but is, in its restored glory, nothing short of stunning. The championship golf course (there is a second course, the Struie) is beyond dispute one of the finest on the planet. The refurbished Royal Golf Hotel is just to the left of the first tee and right behind the clubhouse is Links House, owned by a couple of Chicagoans. It has as many stars as Italian marble and gourmet food can get you. The dual themes are golf and fishing. The eight bedrooms (some in the old, 1843 house, others in a newer addition) are named after the area’s salmon fishing rivers. The interiors are plastered with original oil paintings by original Scots. You can fall out of bed onto Royal Dornoch’s first tee or walk up Golf Road from one of the town’s B&Bs or other boutique hotels with your bag over your shoulder or a pull cart behind you and it’s as normal as the sight of blood pudding at breakfast. Dornoch is far away enough that it attracts the kind of people who seek out places that are far away enough.

The Castle Hotel, originally the cathedral bishop’s castle, has a pub where you’re as likely to run into a novelist who doesn’t play golf at all as you are to run into say, Ben Crenshaw, who played Dornoch for the first time in ’80 and is building a new course nearby with his partner, Bill Coore, the restorers of Pinehurst No. 2. The novelist, on the occasion I was there, was John Dodds, whose first crime thriller was “Bone Machines.” An excerpt: “Striding along one of these alleyways now, in the hour after midnight, confident as only an experienced native can be, it didn’t occur to Ray that he might be mugged or battered to death with a crowbar for no reason whatsoever.” Dornoch’s timeline includes Vikings fighting Picts in 850; Janet Horne burned at the stake for witchcraft in 1727 (the stone marker by the golf course indicates the spot of Scotland’s last such execution but with the wrong date, 1722); and Madonna’s visit in 2000. Make up your own witch joke.

The repurposed jail is an upscale gift shop with fine woolens over here and a vicious caning table over there. While it’s Donald Ross who brings the Americans by the busload, it’s the golf that takes them prisoner. Though Ross didn’t outright transplant Dornoch’s second green — a par three with a target shaped like the Devils Tower in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” — pretty much everything else made the voyage to America after he was talked into leaving his post as the professional and greenkeeper at Royal Dornoch in 1899 by a Harvard professor. Blame the Ivy League for all those demonic, inverted saucer greens that demand just the right shot. Pinehurst No. 2 owes everything to Dornoch from its greens to its natural areas. Incidentally, some of the local Scottish folk weren’t amused when Donald up and left. They’d paid good pound sterling to have him study under Old Tom Morris in St. Andrews. More than a century later, this is their payback: Yanks making pilgrimages to a builder’s blueprint.

Jim Moriarty moved to Southern Pines in 1979 to join the staff of Golf World magazine, a publication founded in Pinehurst in 1947. He worked for Golf Digest and Golf World as both a contributing writer and photographer for 35 years

For Article & More News Go Here: PINEHURST LIVING MAGAZINE write fantastic article about Dornoch


PINEHURST LIVING MAGAZINE write fantastic article about Dornoch posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

What’s On in Dornoch in November

The clocks have gone back and the nights are drawing in but in Dornoch and the surrounding area,there are still loads of great events taking place throughout November.

See here for the first 2 weeks and here for the second 2 weeks. Enjoy!

....And don't forget to Vote for Dornoch in the Great British High Street awards!

 

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See Full Article Here: What’s On in Dornoch in November


What’s On in Dornoch in November posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk

Visit Dornoch this Hogmanay!

Dornoch is well known for welcoming in the New Year in style! Join us to welcome in 2017 with dancing, dinners, candle making, treasure hunt, cocktails and more!

The Whole Hog – Saturday 31st December

10:30 to 14:30 pm Drop-in candle making workshop Coast Candle Co. (01862 811333) – £20
4:00 to 6:00 pm A moment’s calm in the Cathedral  Experience the Labyrinth Dornoch Cathedral
6:30 to 10:30 pm Family Hogmanay Ceilidh Grannie’s Heilan’ Hame (food served from 3pm)
8:30 to 10:30 pm Ceilidh Dancing,  Beginners welcome, BYOB, Dornoch Social Club (silver collection)
7:00 pm Dornoch Castle Hotel 5 course Gala Dinner with champagne and canapés on arrival
£65 per person, booking essential (01862 810216)
7:30 for 8pm Links House Hogmanay Dinner.Booking Essential (01862 810279) £65 pp
10:30 pm Dancing in the Street! The Famous Dornoch Hogmanay Party with The Red Reel Ceilidh Band. Dornoch Square. Lone Piper on Castle Battlements at midnight, followed by Fireworks Display  – Bucket Collection – all donations gratefully received!

First Foot Forward – Sunday 1st January

9:00 am to 12:00 noon Eagle Hotel. First Foot Breakfast. Full Scottish Breakfast £7.50
11:45 am Gather for 12:00 noon Splash Watch the brave ones doing the Dornoch Loony Dook
Soup & Porridge available! Dornoch Beach
12:00 to 2:00pm Links House. Sunday Lunch – Winter Warming offerings – Spiced Flavours! Booking Essential (01862 810279) £30 pp
12:00 to 4:00 pm Grannie’s Heilan’ Hame. Steak Pies for First Footers. Free steak pie with your first drink of 2017 in the Boston Bar!
7:00 pm Dornoch Castle Hotel Gourmet Buffet with sparkling wine and canapés on arrival and live music in the Castle Bar £37.50 per person, booking essential (01862 810216)
9:30 pm Eagle Hotel – live music with Bugsy Maclean

Spirit of the 2nd – Monday 2nd January

*All day Family treasure hunt around Dornoch. Free entry forms in shops and hotels. 1st Prize is a £50 voucher for Kingcraig Fabrics*
9.30 am ROYAL DORNOCH GOLF CLUB East of the Burn v West of the Burn golf competition £10 per person. The course will be open to members and visitors to play an individual Stableford competition. Players must nominate which team they are playing for. Local residents will do this by using their home address and visitors with the address of their accommodation. There will be prizes for individual scores as well as the overall team prize.
1:30 to 3:30 pm Links House – Festive Afternoon Tea. Booking Essential (01862 810279) £20
3:00 to 5:00 pm 
 Gin Tasting Eagle Hotel
7:00 to 8:30 pm Traditional Scottish Music Concert Dornoch Cathedral. Tickets £5 at the door.
9:00 pm Dornoch Castle Hotel Cocktail Night. Enjoy some fantastic cocktails made from the new Dornoch Distillery Gin as well as some light nibbles. £25 per person – booking essential (01862 810216)

See the full leaflet here

For Article & More News Go Here: Visit Dornoch this Hogmanay!


Visit Dornoch this Hogmanay! posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk

Angus Macraild reports on the Dornoch Whisky Festival 28-30 October 2016

I had certain expectations about the Dornoch Whisky Festival while driving up the A9; helping to build a distillery, however, wasn’t one of them. Well, when I say ‘building’, really it was lifting stills into place. I arrived at Dornoch Castle Hotel and was promptly greeted by Phil and Simon Thompson who were in the midst of putting the finishing touches to the new Dornoch Distillery. All that remains is to wait for the official documentation from HMRC to arrive before distillation can finally commence.

Once concluded there was barely time for a tweet and a pint before getting the coach down to Balblair distillery for a tasting and screening of the Angels’ Share in the sage-like company of Charles Maclean. The first dram was a 2002 Balblair direct from a fresh bourbon barrel in the warehouse. If you’ve never tasted whisky from the cask it is one of life’s most supreme and decadent pleasures. To stand amidst all the must and thick dankness of an earthen floored dunnage warehouse watching as whisky is drawn - sloshing and frothy - direct from the cask into your waiting glass is a remarkabl and memorable experience. The whisky was fragrant and redolent with Balblair’s typical coastal zing and notes of gorse, wild flowers and green fruits. Walking out of the warehouse back towards the distillery, dram in hand, under the shimmeringly cold October skies I was reminded by just what special distillery Balblair truly is.

We enjoyed further drams from the distillery’s range, paired with chocolate while we gorged on the Angels’ Share. A film I’d only seen once before so it was a pleasure to watch it again in the place where so many of its key scenes were filmed. Afterwards it was back on the coach for the return trip to Dornoch; the taste of Balblair 1983 still echoing on our palates.

The distilleries of the north easter highlands are somewhat scattered, which is fitting in many ways as a festival such as the Dornoch Whisky fest needs a home - a nerve centre if you like. Undoubtedly that place is Dornoch Castle Hotel with its epically stocked whisky bar. I chatted, drank and dined with whisky enthusiast friends from Norway and new acquaintances from the industry itself. The food at Dornoch Castle is something too few people talk about in reference to the hotel in my opinion. If the whisky bar has one drawback it is only that it somewhat overshadows the restaurant. I’m not sure where else in this neck of the woods you can eat so well as Dornoch Castle Hotel. The execution and preparation using abundant local and seasonal ingredients is just faultless every time I eat here.

After dinner the local musicians played traditional music into the night. It’s a touch that just lifts the whole atmosphere of an already crowded and joyful bar to new levels. All in all it was a night full of merriment with an abundance of remarkable drams scattered throughout the evening. When I finally ascended the stairs to bed I was tired and met my pillow gratefully but still with a gladness that Saturday was still to come with more of the same sure to follow...

I can think of few other occasions where you could sit in the company of Charlies Maclean and eight other fellow whisky enthusiasts nursing a dram of Gordon & MacPhail’s 1974 Millburn Old & Rare. There are always interesting tastings to attend at any whisky festival of course, but to have such an intimate setting with such fine whiskies is a rarity indeed. On Saturday I arrived at the tasting for 3pm as scheduled, the line up was six whiskies - all quite exceptional whiskies. Over two hours later we still hadn’t made it to the sixth and final dram. Tastings are usual quite rigidly times affairs but this one was luxurious, stately in pace and generous in depth and variety of conversation. To have the opportunity to sit and discuss all things whisky in such depth over such fine whiskies in Charlie’s company was a real treat and certainly the highlight of the festival so far for me.

The main event on Saturday though, was the Gala Tasting. A lively, and at times very busy, marquee tent on the grounds of Dornoch Castle Hotel was packed full of highland distilleries and local producers selling and showcasing their wares. For me the opportunity to taste such a multitude of whiskies in the company and tutelage of the people that make them is always welcome. However, what struck me was also the quality of the other produce on offer; delicious vegan home cooking; home baking all made using an old fashioned Aga; some exceptional chocolates and home made truffles - there was no shortage of delicious and decadent food and drink on offer.

Come the evening I disappeared up the road for dinner with friends before returning to the Castle for the Ceilidh. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to do much dancing given I was again cornered in the bar by friends old and new. There isn’t much more to say except that drams were had, stories told and laughter flowed loud and free. It’s hard to overstate what a great setting it is for a festival. To have a single hub at night around which everyone coagulates and comes together to share in whiskies and chatter is a very bright cherry on the cake.

Sunday was the final day of the Dornoch Whisky Festival. People were tired but the sun was out and we were still smiling. We caught the coach at 12.30 from Dornoch to Clynelish distillery for what was to prove the undoubted highlight of the festival for many of us: tasting several truly beautiful Broras in the old Clynelish distillery. It’s hard to explain just how special a place the old Clynelish distillery is. It’s not even a particularly attractive distillery. The grey stonework has an industrial feel to it, interspersed with steel and concrete structures and a fading brick chimney rising above the old pagoda. Walking around the muddle of buildings what makes it so special is that this sprawl of industrial buildings created such an immense and legendary distillate for the entirety of its lifespan. Looking around now and seeing the disrepair of the still room and the spreading lichen, grass and moss which is overtaking everything, it’s sad to think of the whole distillery just sitting there and rotting away.

It does, however, make for a remarkably good place to contemplate and enjoy the whiskies that were produced there. We are led by our guide, the tremendous Jacqueline James-Bow, around the various accessible buildings of the old distillery - stopping for a dram in each one. We began with the filling store, then onto the warehouse before finally stopping for a taste of three different Special Releases Brora - by way of a quick glance in the old still room - in the old distillery office. It was a wonderful way to spend a quiet Sunday afternoon, the air cold and crisp but the sun out and dazzling.

Upon departing Brora it was back to Dornoch Castle Hotel for a few hours of relaxation and recuperation before the finale tasting that evening. We reconvened around eight o’clock for the Balblair tasting hosted by Phil and Simon Thompson. Six old and rare - mostly independently bottled - Balblairs. It was exactly what everyone wanted, a lazy, relaxed and informal but entertaining run through six terrific whiskies. An experience which once again highlighted just what a consistently great distillate Balblair is, and what a uniquely perfect setting the Dornoch Castle Hotel is for such a festival.

After the tasting a few of us remained in the bar - a far quieter place than the previous two nights - and relaxed with a few of our own bottles scattered on the table. As someone remarked: “Where can you get a session like this with these kinds of quality whiskies?” It’s a question you might ask of the whole weekend and one to which the answer remains: not many. Roll on the 2017 Dornoch Whisky Festival.

(Angus Macraild is a writer for www.scotchwhisky.com and Whisky Online Shop)

 

 

 

 

For Article & More News Go Here: Angus Macraild reports on the Dornoch Whisky Festival 28-30 October 2016


Angus Macraild reports on the Dornoch Whisky Festival 28-30 October 2016 posted first on http://visitdornoch.blogspot.co.uk