If you were with me last week, you’ll know I was writing about my wife and my first impressions of the Old Millhouse, the restored building that now offers five-star holiday accommodation in a hidden nook of the historic town of Dalkeith in Midlothian, just outside Edinburgh.

The house was, as its name suggests, originally owned by a Miller.  The gardens, with mature trees – and, we were delighted to see, a youngish Monkey Puzzle tree – sits in a bend of the river South Esk, which originally provided the power to grind the grain.  You can still see the lade (channel – bottom left of my photo) which diverted the river’s flow from the weir to turn the now long-gone water-wheel.

At the rear of the house is a spa pool.  It was covered over during our visit, for the simple reason that it was raining so heavily that no-one, other than a water-vole, would have wanted to take the plunge.  Alongside the spa, there is a large barbecue area with a huge BBQ and solid teak garden furniture.   A few steps away are flower beds, with a profusion of shrubs and flowers, all under a net to prevent the resident deer (see last week) from demolishing them.

Back inside, the thing that struck us most was the exceptional quality of the decoration and furnishing.  The website boasts of Hypnos beds. We’d heard of them, but never slept on one. It was, without doubt, the most comfortable mattress either of us have slept on.  Later, Sally, the host and owner of the Old Millhouse, told us that more than one guest has asked where they can buy one…

Much of the other furniture is from antique shops and it all fits into a coherent theme within each room. That’s not to say there is uniformity between the rooms: on the contrary, there is a marked contrastbetween the snug, a masculine, leather-chaired room with a petite bar and small TV and, say, the Drawing Room with its lovely ornaments and fireplace.  The same applies to the bedrooms, all of which are individual, in the proper sense of that word.  Overall, a classic simplicity and elegance that permeates the entire place – as my wife said when we were leaving, “everything is really high quality, when do you want to go back?”

Alastair Blair