Loch Long Hotel, Arrochar – A Tartan Fever Dream

Dinner served in a Year 7 woodwork project.

According to the glossy website, Loch Long Hotel is “nestled in the heart of Arrochar, offering sweeping views of the majestic mountains and tranquil loch.” Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? In reality, I found myself “nestled” between damp-stained walls, chandeliers that wanted to decapitate me, and a lift designed in the Victorian era by someone who clearly hated humanity. Yes, the loch is indeed there — but through my filthy, grime-laminated window, it looked more like a smudged watercolour painting done by a toddler with greasy fingers.

Their promise of a “warm Highland welcome” translated into signs shouting about car registration, a reception desk emptier than a minister’s expenses form, and a key card handed over with the warmth of a parking ticket. This is Loch Long Hotel: where reality meets marketing spin, punches it in the face, and leaves it weeping into a damp tartan pillow.

🛎️ Reception & Car Park – GDPR Highland Games

Let’s talk first impressions. Forget log fires and friendly greetings — the Loch Long Hotel greets you with home-printed signs barking about registering your car. No ParkingEye machine, no digital system, A random A4 sheet lying on the counter where you scribble your name, reg, and phone number for every other guest to admire. Who needs GDPR when you’ve got a free-for-all phone book in the lobby? I half expected them to pin it to the noticeboard with my mother’s maiden name and National Insurance number.

Parking, to their credit, was free. Though judging by the paranoia-inducing signage, I assume the alternative is a £100 fine and public flogging in the car park. Reception itself was a masterclass in anti-social efficiency: name, key, no chat. I’ve had warmer interactions with self-checkout tills. It made the ibis Preston North welcome look positively professional.

GDPR? More like DIY Yellow Pages.

🛗 The Lift – Museum Piece from Hell

The broken lift wasn’t so much an inconvenience as a historical artifact. A Pickering, established in 1854 — and possibly still in its beta testing stage. Instead of a buttoned marvel of modern engineering, it looked like a normal door had been nailed to the front of a cage, ready to transport miners into the underworld. Frankly, I was thrilled it was out of service. Had it worked, I’d be writing this review from the afterlife.

Victorian time machine: permanently out of order.

So, stairs it was. Narrow, creaking stairs that wound upward beneath chandeliers hung at guillotine level. On the plus side, the carpets were brand-new tartan, presumably installed to silence the complaints about threadbare mush seen in reviews. On the minus side, the walls were cracked and damp enough to make me wonder if the entire building was trying to return itself to the loch. A charming blend of “new carpets” and “structural despair.”

🛏️ Shoebox Living – The Sideways Bathroom Olympics

My room was “renovated,” which here means: “slap on wall panelling, buy a tartan headboard, and hope no one notices it’s the size of a travel kettle.” Two single beds were wedged together like a budget game of Tetris. There was technically a desk, though it was roughly the size of a chopping board.

The bathroom deserves its own Netflix special. Open the door — slam, straight into the sink. To reach the toilet, you had to shuffle sideways like a crab auditioning for Riverdance. The shower offered a gentle trickle suitable only for rinsing a guinea pig. And the fan? So caked in filth it looked like it had been through three world wars. Curtains too short to block out daylight, a mattress lumpier than a sack of spuds, and 13 lonely hangers waiting for the long-term tenants who will never come. Even the ibis Budget Newport prison cell felt palatial in comparison.

☕ Kettle Crimes & Biscuit Politics

Every hotel has a kettle test, and Loch Long’s scraped a pass by virtue of not looking like a biohazard. Tea and instant coffee sachets were supplied, presumably for those who enjoy the taste of despair. For snacks, I received four Biscoff biscuits — solid enough to make my top 10, but hardly the gesture of Highland generosity they imagine. No water, no minibar, no effort.

Toiletries were a personal insult. A plastic cup and the dreaded “Just For You” multipurpose goo — the all-in-one shampoo, body wash, bubble bath, and probably engine oil. Compared to this, the ibis prison gel feels like Clarins spa stock. If this is “well-appointed,” then I’m the Queen of England.

🪟 Views Through Grime

Ah, the views! A selling point plastered across their marketing. And yes, technically my window faced the mountains and loch. Unfortunately, the glass was so filthy it transformed a spectacular Highland sunset into a blurry oil painting. Imagine Instagram but with a dirt filter set to maximum.

This is the tragedy of Loch Long Hotel: it genuinely has the raw material for a world-class view. Instead, you’re left pressing your nose against greasy panes like an unwanted extra in Oliver Twist. “Please sir, may I have a cloth?”

Five-star view, one-star window cleaning.

🍺 The Guinness Crime Scene

Step into the bar — modern, spacious, and absolutely drowning in tartan. Carpet, curtains, chairs, even the speakers were smothered in it. Whoever sourced the tartan roll must’ve been paid by the metre and hell-bent on upholstering the nation.

Then came the Guinness incident. On tap? Out. Solution? A tin. Fine, except the barman had no clue how the surger worked. He poured it wrong, stared blankly when nothing happened, and required a full masterclass from me on the concept of water. Finally, he placed the drink before me — in a Belhaven Best glass. This crime gallops gleefully into The Great Guinness Glass Audit right beside my Novotel Newcastle Airport pint debacle.

🍛 Curry in the Highlands

Nothing says “Highland getaway” like… curry. The menu was Indian from top to bottom, a strange choice in a Scottish lochside hotel, but I wasn’t complaining. My vegetable bhuna with garlic naan arrived in five minutes flat, while other guests waited half an hour for their chicken. Maybe the kitchen has a direct Glasgow takeaway hotline.

Presentation was another story. The waiter placed a giant wooden box on the table containing one set of cutlery and salt and pepper. It looked like a school woodworking project gone horribly right. The food itself? Excellent. The cutlery box? Comedy gold. A surreal collision of genuinely tasty curry and dinner theatre worthy of Monty Python.

📶 Wi-Fi Powered by Nostalgia

To access Wi-Fi, you had to beg reception for the password. The speed: 0.60 down, 1.67 up. That’s not internet, that’s archaeology. Even ibis Styles Birmingham managed faster connections, and they still operate on stone tablets.

The upside? I had plenty of time to read TripAdvisor horror stories. Karaoke until midnight, 2 AM fire alarms, rats leaping from pasta boxes… all things I thankfully missed. My biggest tragedy was watching my Guinness die in a Belhaven glass while my phone failed to load Gmail. Even ibis Styles Birmingham managed to beat this Stone Age connection

Powered by dial-up nostalgia, now with extra buffering.

👥 Staff & DIY Hospitality

Hospitality here is interactive. Reception gave me a key with the warmth of a speeding ticket. The bar barman treated a Guinness surger like alien technology. And in the restaurant, I watched a German family ask for their dirty table to be cleaned — only to be handed a wet cloth and told to do it themselves. The future of dining, apparently: BYO elbow grease.

At Loch Long Hotel, you don’t just stay — you participate. It’s like IKEA Live! but with worse lighting and more tartan.

German efficiency meets Scottish hospitality: here’s a rag, mate — Viel Spaß!

🧐 Final Thoughts – Tartans, Trickles, and Tragedy

So what happened?

I entered the GDPR Hunger Games in the car park. Admired a lift that belongs in a museum. Climbed three flights beneath chandeliers set to kill. Squeezed into a shoebox with a sideways bathroom. Sipped Guinness from a Belhaven glass after training the barman. Ate curry from a school project cutlery box. Watched DIY table-cleaning in the restaurant. Missed karaoke, rats, and fire alarms — but only thanks to luck.

Would I stay again? Only if they wash the windows, replace the Wi-Fi with something made this century, and swear a tartan oath never to serve Guinness in the wrong glass again.

⭐ Final Rating: 🍺❌ 2/10 Mis-Poured Guinnesses (A tartan fever dream with good curry. Bring cleaning cloths, bottled water, and your own pint glass.)