Floors Castle

📌 Kelso, Scottish Borders
★★★★

If bigger is better, it doesn’t get any better than this! Floors Castle is the current seat of the Duke of Roxburghe, with a cool 7,000 rooms. Actually, we just made that up (it’s probably in the hundreds), but the building certainly holds the title of the largest inhabited mansion in Scotland. This Borders behemoth dates to 1721, with William Adam the original architect. But it was William Playfair (also the brains behind Edinburgh‘s New Town) who added turrets, battlements and other fancy embellishments a century later, which make the place instantly recognisable today. Although interesting, we’d have liked to have a little more information and seen a few more rooms on the self-guided house tour, which takes in a handful of public rooms and exhibition areas but none of the more intimate areas such as bedrooms or bathrooms. Taking photographs of the interior wasn’t allowed on our visit. Around the estate there’s a lot more to see, just about making the ticket price worth it. Highlights include an excellent walled garden, Millennium Garden (with giant, intertwined initials of the duke and duchess etched onto the lawn), riverside walks, cycle trails, playgrounds, two cafes… you get the picture.