'The Glorious Playground': how Gleneagles has gone from Palace of the Glens to family fun factory
How do we all feel about bunking off school for a sneaky holiday? I’m all for it, providing the children are learning lots of transferable life skills, such as… falconry. Or gun dog training. Which is how I ended up on the phone to the eldest’s school, describing his “miserable fever”, just as the announcement requiring all passengers to Edinburgh to proceed to Gate 2 came over the speakers.
We were off to Gleneagles, “the Palace in the Glens”, famed for its golf courses and tweedy outdoor pursuits. I have never been before, somehow imagining priceless porcelain and brittle bones wrapped in tartan, just waiting for my children to break them.
Plus: the price tag. Since opening in 1924, Gleneagles’ “reassuringly expensive” status has ensured it stays a highly perfumed haven for the entitled with titles (or, in more recent years, those keen to pretend).
Over the past two years, however, new owner Ennismore has spent many millions renovating rooms and public spaces. And, I suspect, the attitude, too. Because, quite honestly, this is now the sort of hotel with which parents might be rewarded in heaven. It is warm, welcoming, witty and, at all times, wonderfully luxurious.
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Take the recently revived Century Bar. We arrive with muddy boots and short tempers. The room is an art deco masterpiece in artichoke green, with raspberry pillars and velvet seats, decorative glass panels and views over the snow-capped Perthshire mountains. It is vast, like the Orient Express on steroids. It is plush, delicate and expensive. It is, I begin to see with mounting horror, not a place for children. But then I spot a couple of buggies at nearby tables, and a giant glass jar of gummy sweets beside the bar, for children to dip into.
Four-year-old Frida orders smoked salmon, then asks for ketchup. A waiter flashes her a giant smile and brings two pots of proper Heinz.
This mix of historic grandeur and playfulness follows us everywhere. Our room has dove-grey panelling and original oil paintings. There is a dedicated dialling code, should you experience a sartorial crisis and require a floral buttonhole delivered pronto. But we also have a minibar hidden within a retro trunk, a lamp in the shape of a grizzly bear, and a mini Marshall amp into which you can plug your phone and dance to Katy Perry.
I would gladly hibernate here till summer. Instead, I am dragged to the new “adventure areas” – Little Glen and the Den. Opened in January, the first is a supervised crèche where guests are free to leave young children for two hours a day. The second is a “hang out” for six to 15-year-olds.
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Little Glen looks like an illustration of an enchanted garden brought to life. An upholstered tree “grows” from one corner, its painted leaves spread across the ceiling. There is an indoor treehouse, with a slide and reading nook. Hobby-horses line up in the “stables”. Woolly rocking-sheep and knitted toadstool seats litter the “grass” carpet. And – the pièce de résistance – a child-sized Gleneagles train puffs from its own station, complete with climbable bridge. My children, veteran kids’ club refuseniks, ask to return every day. In the vast Den, PS4s, Xboxes and a cinema space are mixed with old-fashioned fun including a mammoth snakes-and-ladders grid that covers the floor. Seven-year-old Johnny is captivated, but so are older generations: we watch two grandparents absorbed by the giant wall-mounted Scrabble board.
Gleneagles now bills itself as “The Glorious Playground”. It’s fabulously pretentious, but you have to hand it to them. Playfulness is being encouraged everywhere, across the generations.
The children and I have a falconry lesson. We take a hawk for a walk around the grounds and are awestruck by a bird of prey landing on our gloves. We go ferret racing, and it is funny. The children trot on ponies, then drive a tiny replica Land Rover.
We float in the steamy outdoor “hot pool” and then eat supper in the new Birnam Brasserie (which has a perfect children’s menu) where the waiters invite the children behind the bar to design and shake their own mocktails. Returning to the room, we find the beds turned down, blackout blinds drawn and jazz playing softly.
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Here’s the rub: you cannot buy a sandwich for much less than a tenner. Falconry costs ￡97. For 45 minutes. Yet it is all so magical, I spend much of our stay mourning the fact that I’m unlikely to return. “See you soon,” says a kind waiter as we leave. “I’m afraid not,” replies Johnny earnestly. “Mummy says we’d have to rob a bank.” Or take a term-time holiday…
A family of four can stay in a Sovereign room from ￡325 per night in low season and ￡465 in high season, with a ￡50 supplement for each child aged six or over.
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