The latest addition to the portfolio of Wildland properties owned by Anders Hoch Povlsen, an extremely rich Dane, and his wife Anne, is a Victorian manse in the tiny town of Tongue, near the top of mainland Scotland, two-and-a-bit hours from Inverness. The town comprises a couple of pubs, a post office, a doctor’s surgery, a handful of bungalows, and not much else. There are four double rooms at Lundies House, three in an adjoining building, and a self-catering, two-bedroom bunkhouse suitable for families.
The style throughout is muted, pared-down, and a little woolly-bobbly-scratchy—yet utterly sumptuous in that way that northern Europeans do better than anyone else. Rustic, yes, but only if your definition of rustic includes museum-quality furniture, collectible art, and piles of coffee-table books. Lundies House is perhaps the most versatile of the various Wildland properties, equally good for families and solo recluses, daydreamers, and sporty/outdoorsy types—nearby Kinloch Lodge (also Wildland) is a fully equipped sporting estate. Povlsen has made no secret of his desire to rewild great tracts of the Highlands. This is a fascinating, complicated, and, in Scotland, sensitive subject. A visit to a Wildland property could easily become something more than a spoiling mini-break in agreeable surroundings. It might change the way you think about the world around you.
A version of this article originally appeared in Condé Nast Traveller.
