The key feature of this tour is that the participants are not accommodated in a hotel. They are guests in a private home. A biggish home admittedly, an architecturally distinguished eighteenth-century country house with excellent pictures, exceptional furniture and gardens which spread out to the coast overlooking the Firth of Clyde.

Some negatives. You will find no minibar in your room, no television, let alone air conditioning. Rugs may reveal generations of use, the bathroom may be a few yards down the corridor, the shower may be Edwardian and there is no reception (although staff are on hand).

If you are not put off so far, the compensations include bedrooms the size of an average sitting room laden with antiques and books, and the opportunity to roam at leisure through the hall, drawing room, library and dining rooms. You are also free to wander in the adjoining gardens, woods and fields.  

Ardgowan is a superb mansion of the 1790s designed by a follower of Robert Adam. For this very special tour it is the base for excursions to other country houses in the vicinity, at nearly all of which special arrangements will have been made exclusively for this group. In journeying between them, you pass through some heart-stoppingly lovely landscapes – lochs and sea, lowland heath and mountains, rolling farmland, forests.

As much country house party as study tour, there is plenty of time at leisure at Ardgowan. The house is a textbook case of the challenges facing current owners of historic properties of the first rank. Our hostess, Lady Shaw Stewart, is an art historian and a prominent figure in the field of historic buildings in Scotland. The lecturer, Caroline Knight, is her sister. She is also an art historian and has a speciality in the country houses of Britain.

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