The CeilidhPlace

Actor Robert Urquhart founded The Ceilidh Place in Ullapool in 1970 as a gathering place for eating, talking and singing, and his family still runs it today. What began around a single spindle bookshelf grew into a hotel, bunkhouse, cafe-bar, restaurant and small bookshop with a Scottish literary bias, added in 1980 when Ullapool had no bookshop of its own and a trip to Inverness meant a 120-mile round journey. The bar opens from 11am and the cafe from 8am, both running into the evening, and the venue continues to host live music and rotating art exhibitions. Rooms are simply furnished rather than styled as a conventional boutique hotel. The bookshop sells online as an affiliate of Bookshop.org, funnelling a share of sales back into the shop itself.