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With the tennis court, hot tubs, swimming pool and thousand acre wood to play in – let alone games cottage, snooker room etc – lots of Ormidale parties find they don’t venture much out from the estate itself. But we have a host of activities on our doorstep for those who want a more adventurous, exhausting or active holiday. As well as general site-seeing and trips to the Island of Bute, Inverary and further afield, there are a host of other activities you can undertake around Glendaruel. The Cowal Way – on which we sit - is justifiably popular with walkers of all standards and styles. A lot of serious hill-walkers use this area as the best evidence there is that “Munro-bagging” is a fairly limiting activity, and that height from sea level ain’t what makes a magical walking or climbing experience. The Kyles of Bute and the immediate area really is fabulous walking country. It’s also great for touring, and fantastic for cycling for those who want to work on two wheels rather than four. There are some really excellent and quite varied routes direct from the house, involving all sorts of terrain and levels of strain!
 Golf – there’s a lovely 9 hole pay and play course ten minutes away above Tighnabruaich. We’ve supplied half a dozen bags of golf clubs for the houses. The Kyles of Bute Golf club is refreshingly committee-free, and they arent too fussed about the usual rules re golf shoes provided you don’t arrive in jeans and carve the course up. The same applies to the almost equally spectacular nine hole course at Blairmore & Strone, half an hour away. Cowal Golf Club at Dunoon and Inellan are the 18 hole courses in the area that welcome visitors.
Fishing - too many options to go into here, but you can spend anything from £9 per day to over £1,000 for river fishing in the area. You can fish for trout in our own stream for nothing or in the Lochen at the head of the river. Mackerel on a line in a boat on the Kyles is a right of passage for hundreds of West of Scotland kids every year. They swim in shoals all around these waters – the mackerel, not the kids - and there’s no permit payable.
It’s a fabulous part of the world for water-sports of all sorts. There’s a sailing school at Tighnabruaich and another based on the Holy Loch. The Kyles of Bute offer some of Britain’s best sailing. Horse-riding, climbing, canoeing, caving, archery, quad biking, paint-balling, and clay pigeon shooting are also all available either on site or in the area. We don’t shoot, ourselves, but we can help you arrange a day’s grouse or pheasant shooting, or stalking in season, if some of your party want to do that.
Shops, Restaurants & Pubs
There is a wee shop selling all the basics at the camp-site in the Glendaruel valley, about a mile’s walk away, beside the historic Kilmodan standing stones. You get a slightly bigger choice in Duncan’s at Kames or the Spar at Tighnabruich five miles away, and all year round opening. Dunoon is 16 miles away and is a thriving market / harbour town with award-winning bakeries, cafes and butchers, as well as a big Co-Op and a big Somerfield supermarket. Our estate managers can arrange to shop – and unpack - for you in advance of your stay if you want a supply laid in on arrival.
Scotland isn’t really well served by pubs in general; this area is definitely an exception. The Glendaruel Hotel is a lovely wee pub, a two mile drive away – or about a mile and a quarter as the crow staggers – and serves good pub grub or better. (At time of writing, February 2011, it is unfortunately closed mid-refurbishment and potentially about to go up for sale) The Colintraive Hotel is a busy popular pub, a ten minute drive away. Patricia and her team will give you a warm welcome and an exceptionally good meal. The Colintraive was actually voted Scotland’s Inn of the Year for 2010. An Lochan in Tighnabruaich and the Kames Hotel both offer better than usual pub fare. Chatters in Dunoon is highly recommended, and the Whistlefield and Coylet Inns on Loch Eck are also worth a visit. Our favourite restaurant in the entire universe is on Loch Fyne, overlooking the old Castle Lachlan. (The view from the Inver Cottage terrace is one of the Robbie Innes pictures on our drawing room wall.) It’s less than half an hour away from the house. The Benmore Gardens tea room is not half bad, either, and on either side of Loch Fyne Otterferry’s Oyster Catcher Inn and Loch Fyne Oyster Bar have good reputations (on which, it might be said, the latter perhaps trades slightly…) All in all, though, there are few areas of Scotland where you can enjoy such a variety of excellent, reasonably priced menus.
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Things To Do 
