Scotland's leading hotel is a luxury playground and it's got a fun new way to get you off-grid

Gleneagles, Scotland’s most famous bastion of hospitality, never rests on its laurels. In the last 10 years, in particular, much has been done to keep loyal guests returning and new guests suitably wowed by all that is on offer in what the hotel calls its ‘playground’.

This is a place for doing stuff, for getting stuck into the great outdoors (and indoors, for that matter) and for embracing a raft of activities so vast that the idea of a dull moment is simply out of the question.

And, each year, to keep momentum up, to keep the hotel evolving, another little tempting activity is added to the roster.

This year’s little tempter is Frandy Water, to which I was given a ‘first-in’ introduction just days before it’s official opening (May 1). Technically designated a reservoir, Frandy Water in appearance is mercifully more Scottish loch than man-made water storage facility, cradled as it is within the picturesque embrace of the heathery, sheep-strewn Ochil hills, a mere 10-minute drive from the hotel’s front door.

Back in 1824, when Gleneagles was founded, even indeed as recently as the turn of the 21^st century, the idea of cold-water swimming, waterside saunas and a slap-down with a handful of birch twigs was really only a pastime indulged in by gung-ho Scandinavians.

How times have changed.

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These days, as standalone saunas pop up beside beaches, in private gardens and hotel spas, it seems we can’t get enough of extreme hot and cold therapy — good for the body, good for the mind, or so we are told. Bring it on, I say, I’m a true believer.

Frandy Water, however, is about more than saunas and wild swimming; there is also fly fishing (the loch is well-stocked with rainbow trout, plus a few wild brownies), kayaking and canoeing, with experts on hand for all. Conor McLeary, managing director of Gleneagles, is first to point out that among all the activities the hotel offers, there was a shortage of al fresco ‘water’ experiences. This box has now been ticked and, I should add, in some style.

A Gleneagles Land Rover delivers me to The Bothy, the centre of Frandy Water operations, designed along the lines of a traditional wooden fishing hut but exquisitely pimped with creature comforts: sofas, blankets, books to read, an abundance of dry wellies and a wood-burning stove. No chill fingers, wet feet or damp sandwiches here.

Outside, a large wooden deck extends towards the loch — part viewing platform, part entertaining space, part sundeck for a picnic lunch on a fine day. And fine it is, the cool, April air warmed by a whisper of summer and only the slightest breeze to ruffle the water and distort the mirror image of golden hills and shifting clouds. When Scotland does days like this a little bit of magic takes hold.

Down by the water’s edge, a spiral of wood smoke curling from the chimney, is the sauna — more hobbit house than square box, blondly luminescent, curvaceous, shingle-tiled, strangely and surprisingly beautiful, and moulded into the landscape as if nothing out of the ordinary.

A regular sweat‘n’dip sauna routine feels far too mundane for a building such as this and Gleneagles, as we know, never does mundane. So a sauna therapist accompanies me in, to beat the air and circulate the heat, to dowse me with sprinklings of cold, pine-scented water, and to slap me down, top to toe, with a fragrant, leafy birch whisk. I am grateful for the leaves — and for the fact that the Finns have being doing this for centuries. The smell is good, the sensation is good and that’s good enough for me.

All the while, Frandy Water glistens beyond the sauna’s small, arched window. I dither a bit outside, too long perhaps as the body begins to cool, but I take the plunge — inelegant, breathless, intoxicated. Gleneagled, to coin a phrase.

Frandy Water experiences start from £220 for a 90-minute session for two people, plus £80 for each additional person.

Stays at Gleneagles start from £595 per night on a bed and breakfast basis. Retreats priced separately.

Visit the Gleneagles website for more information and to book.