Thirty Saturdays Hath November

For most people, Saturday morning is a small weekly luxury — a gentle pause, a chance to catch up with life beyond work. For us, owning and running a small Highland hotel means that during the season, Saturday mornings, along with days off, simply don’t exist.

For thirty-plus weeks of the year, from late March to the end of October, weekends are working days: breakfasts, turnarounds, arrivals, departures, late check-ins, early departures, laundry rhythms, team briefings, bar stock, food orders, reservations, repairs, and the ever-present “just one more” guest request. We don’t resent it — it’s the life we chose — but it means that the usual punctuation marks of the week vanish. No leisurely brunches. No appointments. No gym workouts. No cheering on a team (or offspring) on the sports field. No personal admin. No gentle DIY in the home. And certainly no catching up with friends.

So when November arrives, it feels like a glorious, extended Saturday morning — a month-long exhale after thirty weeks of holding everything together. Hotel business still continues, of course, but our focus shifts to include the more domestic and the wake-up alarm sounds rather later.

This change doesn’t begin the moment the last guest leaves, but only after the closedown rituals are complete: the final deep clean, the ovens scrubbed back to silver, pans poached, the linens stored away, and the last of our seasonal team have headed out for homes or holidays. And then — suddenly — the hotel falls quiet. Corridors that only days earlier echoed with footsteps and conversation now hold a gentle hush. The kitchen, once full of bustle, clatter, loud music and the occasional football commentary (apparently vital to prevent every mother sauce from splitting), settles into a peaceful stillness. After months of rhythm and noise, it is almost startling.

The first morning we wake without an alarm, and without a breakfast service to prepare, has the odd feeling of a bank holiday that comes as a surprise. What do normal people do on a Saturday morning? It seems we take a whole month to find out.

The first wave of November is always friendship. All those postponed dinners and missed celebrations are squeezed joyfully into the diary. Visitors appear — long-overdue, warmly welcomed. Raclette machines are plugged in; dishes from Cook-Up week defrosted and reheated, wine is opened; the conversations stretch late into the night. There is news to exchange from the past half-year (or more), and laughter that grows louder as the room warms and the cheese melts.

Plans for next year arise in that familiar, hopeful way — hill walks, voyages in the Tricia Mairi, small adventures, all promised with great enthusiasm and, depending on the level of merriment, varying degrees of realism. Sixtieth birthdays are already fading memories for both of us and most of our circle but that Saturday feeling makes us all invincible around the fire.

Then comes the domestic archaeological dig. Every November, we rediscover the objects that were removed from the hotel in haste back in April or stored in a corner of our home with the despair of “things we failed to do this winter” — the shoes we meant to mend, the dry cleaning, the boxes of items destined for the loft, including Xmas decorations used last year (why bother putting away now!), the spare couple of restaurant chairs that were stored annoyingly in the hallway for seven months. Contents of wardrobes are sifted through, and we’re oddly grateful to recall which jumpers we actually like and which ones we had quite forgotten existed.

And there is always the annual pilgrimage: dogs and cats bundled into the car for grooming appointments and routine vet checks - local for us so often means travelling right across the UK mainland to the east coast of Sutherland. Garden equipment makes its way to the workshops near Inverness for servicing, the lawnmower given its winter blessing, the strimmer coaxed - or even re-engineered back into life.

The Polycrub and workshop are cleared and reorganised in a satisfying rush of productivity that is entirely impossible during the season. Tools are cleaned, the mysterious missing screwdrivers reappear. Richard’s workshop slowly evolves from “active construction site” to the “place where things belong.” The hotel office becomes less chandlers. Incoming boxes of spring bulbs are sorted according to the masterplan devised back in summer and planted in between the worst of the weather, Dahlias and some more tender perennials are lifted and stored. Mulches are ferried around the ground to help outdoor plants survive the wet winter weather, and flower beds hedges tidied as much as time allows in the ever shortening daylight.

This year there are regular trips down to Lochbroom by Ullapool to Johnston and Loftus boatyard where their team are working on our traditional wooden gentleman’s yacht, Tricia Mairi, restoring her to her classic bonny Miller Fifer origins. The re-masting is progressing well, alongside the building and welding of replacement railings. We are steadily removing her more sailing yacht features installed by a previous owner for a different life than the one she will have here. She may look a little less regatta ready but she is definitely returning to the once proud boast of the famous Miller boatyard in Fife, “boats to get you home”.

Then there is the paperwork. Personal admin piles that have quietly accumulated — letters, reminders, forms, things requiring signatures, things requiring patience. Bureaucrats, in our experience, have never run a seasonal business: their reminders arrive faithfully, regardless of whether we are in the height of summer with guests to care for or in the quiet of November with breathing space at last. So we sit with tea, open the envelopes, and tackle the stack with the grim determination of people who have to face a wall of disapproval for tardiness but are reassured that most of it could have waited until now.

All of this is, however, light relief from the demands of the hotel. VAT returns that need to be done as part of the non-weekend focus of November. Or Fiona’s overdue SEO (what is this AI nonsense?) and hotel website upgrade project which is underway for completion by early January. Let’s consult an expert…oh dear, that will be me.

The routine snagging list of repairs and refurbishments are compiled and scheduled with trades for implementation after their pre-Christmas domestic rush has been handled. Most of all booking enquiries have to be handled swiftly, season 2026’s success depends on those! So amid the relaxation, our month of Saturdays is still fair game for hotel demands.

This year, approaching a decade since we first arrived here, November has brought an additional, unexpected feeling: release. High on the attic shelves sit the remnants of a former life — Jaeger suits, city blazers, and smart shoes from careers that now feel several lifetimes away. Brand names that have all but vanished from the High Street, and so has that chapter from our lives. If these garments haven’t earned their keep in ten years, they don’t belong in our future. Letting them go feels less like discarding the past, and more like acknowledging that our lives — our real lives — are now firmly rooted here, between the hills and the sea.

November is our extended Saturday morning: not quite a holiday but less hurried, restorative, quietly joyful and full of promise. A month in part to reclaim ourselves, to reset our lives, before the wheel begins to turn again.

The Quiet We Keep

In the summer this is a gentle place, the sea here doesn’t shout; it murmurs.

Waves brush the stones in Badcall Bay, and on still evenings the loudest sounds are from the seals splashing in the bay.. Eddrachilles was built for reflection — once the parish manse, now a place where people come to rest, to think, and to listen to the quiet.

That quiet has its own gentle rhythm. From the courtyard windows you can watch dozens of small birds breakfasting just a few metres away — the flutter of Goldfinches feasting on sunflower seeds, a pair of Redpolls, a Robin darting in for crumbs. They too like to eat in peace, and their company has become part of the calm that fills the hotel.

That’s why our stays are for guests aged twelve years and over, and why the house and gardens are reserved for residents through the morning and afternoon. It isn’t a rule made against anyone; it’s a promise made for everyone — that guests can read, write, craft, knit, paint, sketch, or simply breathe without interruption.

By evening, the tone shifts. The lights come up in The Glebe Kitchen, local families and neighbours gather alongside our resident guests, and conversation hums across the tables. Children - of all ages - tuck into their suppers with enviable appetite, and the laughter that follows is the sound of belonging.

Quiet doesn’t mean silence. It means space — space for sea and sky, for thought, for creativity, and for one another.
That’s the quiet we keep at Eddrachilles.