ESCAPE CHAPELTON COTTAGE

Long days and bright skies may feel out of reach, but this cottage on Glenkindie Estate serves as a portal to summer all year round

- Natasha Radmehr

You know that feeling you get when you step off a plane in a hot country and that first blast of sun grazes your skin? I experience it in reverse walking into Chapelton Cottage. It's November, it's dim, the country roads that led us here were glossy with ice and bordered by snow. I push the cottage door open an inch and a narrow bolt of gold light shoots out from a yellow-painted kitchen. In we bundle, my mum, son and I, trading slush for heated Moroccan floor tiles and scarves for a warm stove. Nice knowing you, winter.

“On a dark, gloomy day, or when it’s wet and miserable, you want to stay somewhere uplifting,” says Joelle Reid, the interior designer behind the decor. She has renovated four of these self-catering cottages (and has another two to go) at Glenkindie, a slice of rural Donside close to Alford that belongs to the owners of the nearby Kildrummy Inn (which Joelle redesigned a few years ago). “We wanted the cottages to feel relaxing and inspiring; places to write and draw in, or cosy down without having to venture out.”