Battlesteads Hotel & Restaurant

“Since taking over the business thirteen years ago, we have taken the hotel on a green journey. It started with installing a biomass boiler for energy and now includes everything from growing our own fruit, vegetables, salads, and herbs in our kitchen garden and polytunnels, to supporting local food producers, to creating a wildlife pond, to producing our own book on bird watching, Birds of Battlesteads.”

Beetroots with semifreddo, pickled, yoghurt crisp, beetroot bloomer, and micro shoots; home-farmed shiitake and oyster mushrooms with tagliatelle, wild garlic pesto and Brinkburn cheese; and posh rhubarb and custard with house-grown forced rhubarb, cardamom custard panna cotta, rhubarb sorbet, and rhubarb pepper.

You might come here for the the eight-course tasting menu with its centrepiece of pink cutlet of local lamb with haggis shepherd’s pie, but you’ll stay for the breathless intimacy with nature afforded by five new, environmentally-friendly luxury timber lodges and the on-site observatory for post-prandial stargazing. The walled garden has been specially planted to encourage wildlife, with a bat box and an owl box plus bird feeders to encourage the many smaller species in the area. Badgers, foxes, herons, and red squirrels are frequently reported and a family of otters can be seen in the early morning on the river next to the bridge. Red squirrels! Otters! This place is a Beatrix Potter fantasy with lunch and dinner thrown in.

Winners of The Catleys 2019 Sustainable Business Award