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Welcome to Ormidale House Estate – and to our re-vamped website featuring a few changes for 2013. Here’s hoping it is a lucky one for us all. It hasn’t been an easy last year for anyone, but despite the cloud of economic gloom and doom hovering over the UK economy, 2012 was our busiest ever year with more enquiries, bookings and visitors than ever before, and this year does look set to be even busier.
We now have four fabulous houses for you to choose from, suitable for parties from 2 to 77, so I hope you will come and join the hordes of returning guests who keep us so full.
It’s partly because we have kept prices more or less frozen since 2009, and partly because we get such good feedback and word-of-mouth. Ormidale was described by a recent guest as having “the happiest atmosphere - and the happiest ghosts - of any house in Scotland” – I really liked that thought. It is a place that is usually echoing to the sound of laughter.
We have some exciting new business stuff planned for 2013, but our main hope is that laughter will continue to echo through our halls, as families and friends come together for weeks and weekends throughout the year, to enjoy what we have in the houses, and what the Cowal peninsula has to offer visitors. Only an hour and a half from Glasgow, in our 22 acres of private grounds, with a heated indoor swimming pool and a tennis court, children’s play areas, separate games cottage, and hot tubs and saunas for each house, we are delighted to offer the following fabulously flexible self-catering or catered accommodation for up to 77 guests in total.
Ormidale House –13 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, snooker room, dining hall for 24, two TV rooms, breakfast room, drawing room, sauna, hot tub, sleeps up to 31 with adult occupancy usually capped at 24
The Mill House –9 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, stunning open plan reception space, sauna and hot tub sleeps up to 22 with a maximum adult occupancy of 16
The Old Barn –7 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, travertine marble floors throughout, sauna, hot tub, sleeps up to 16 with normal adult occupancy at 12
Garden Cottage –2 bedrooms and two bunk / box rooms, shower-room and kitchenette, all on an accessible ground floor, for up to 9 additional guests as a tardis-style overflow to any of the other houses.
 Ormidale House has been described as “probably the best party house in Scotland.” We certainly want ours to be the best houses for a house party available to let in the West of Scotland. The dining hall will seat 24 in style and comfort, and the rest of the house lends itself ideally to big groups for family celebrations, weddings, anniversaries, corporate bonding sessions, whatever. There are two spaces in which we can seat groups of up to 72 on round tables of 12 for formal celebration dinners. So we are increasingly used for weddings when couples want the exclusivity and privacy that taking the whole estate gives.
With the three other renovations now complete, we now have space for bigger and smaller parties! The Mill House sleeps only 22, but it has a fabulous open plan living area of nearly 1,000 square feet with a hanging landing which makes a great spot for speeches or ceremonies. The Old Barn sleeps a maximum of 16 in maybe even more style and comfort. Between them, these two stunning steading renovations attracted nearly 300 bookings in 2010 and 2011. The first guests described them as “the wow factory.” We have also completed the renovation of the pretty little Garden Cottage to provide extra accommodation and additional flexibility for parties.
Whichever house you choose, our aim is to make Ormidale as luxurious a place to stay as the nicest small hotel, but at a fraction of the cost, and without any of the formality you’ll find in a hotel… and of course with the option of being completely self-catering if that’s what you want. It’s not got the grandeur or intimidating historic atmosphere of a castle or a stately home proper, but as many of our guests have said, that makes it a very comfortable place to be at home in - even with 30 or more people. We can arrange catering if you want, on either a one-off meal, or residential live-in basis. Our latest ventures for 2012 are aimed at adding some learning around the laughter. We have created a series of partnerships with experts in their fields, and are delighted to be launching what started out as an idea for a series of themed house-parties, and have turned out to be just a wee-bit more professional and serious than that...
Rob Marshall and his team have already started to deliver a series of fun and challenging fitness and weight-loss centred Luxury Bootcamps; participants are guaranteed to lose weight or get their money back. The feedback from the first 100 or so guests has been incredibly positive and we now have monthly camps planned for the rest of the year. Three, five, or seven day packages are available. We are going to launch a catering school in 2013, so watch this space!
 Ormidale is a work in progress as well as a labour of love - and we are not yet quite at the genuinely luxurious “5 star” stage we want to be with it in time. We are getting there. No web-site will do the house, the gardens, or the surrounding area justice, but at least this site gives you a flavour. We’ve only had Ormidale since November 2005 and our new estate managers Valerie and John have only just joined us. We’re doing wee improvements and upgrades every week, so the photos are always out of date, but at least you can get an idea of how the houses work – the “virtual tours” probably give the best impressions you can get.
 Having finished the new houses and the heated indoor swimming pool which all three houses share, we are back at the beginning of the process and upgrading a lot of what we first did in the main house. We upgraded six bathrooms last year – gorgeous floor to ceiling travertine marble throughout and whirpool Jacuzzi baths means the bathrooms are now as luxurious as you’ll find anywhere. We also completed our tennis court in 2010, and added hot-tubs for each of the three houses. The newly restored Garden Cottage provides overspill accommodation for any of the other three houses, as well as being most suitable for people of limited mobility.
We’ll never stop spending money on these houses, and we’ll never stop trying to improve your holiday, weekend, celebration, wedding, or other party experience. I hope we can welcome you sometime in 2013, that you can add your laughter to our laughter bank, and add more happy memories to the Ormidale memory bank.
Please call 01505 872515 if you have any questions about what we offer, or email info@ormidalehouse.com
Best wishes again for 2013, and thanks for visiting the site. I hope we can welcome you in person to one of the houses at some time in the year.
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Welcome
to Ormidale House
