Bar/fly: The Witchery, Scotland

'At The Witchery you can have breakfast by candlelight and drink any time of day.' Illustration / Rod Emmerson

Och, witch room? Clash of the tartans and a wee dram later, Kevin Pilley is still deciding.

The rooms have been described as a cross-between a bordello and an explosion in a tartan factory.

The Witchery is also said to be haunted by a lady who was burned at the stake for witchcraft 500 years ago. I didn't see or smell her. And the fire alarm and smoke detectors certainly didn't go off if she was padding about during the night.

The Witchery by the Castle, in Edinburgh, was opened by chef and restauranteur James Thompson who - fearing he had been born into the wrong time and class - gave it an eccentric, OTT and very self-indulgent makeover.

It's now decorated in a Scottish baronial baroque and flamboyantly creepy but gentrified Gothic style, with more than a little camp thrown in. It's all very Pugin, deliberately decadent, elaborately kitsch and self-consciously unconventional. And great fun.

The Witchery is reached via a narrow passage called Boswell's Court and up a turnpike stone stairway. The tenement building beside Edinburgh Castle dates back to 1595, and offers seven premium-priced suites.

You aren't asked whether you prefer smoking or non-smoking, instead you choose whether you want an organ pipe headboard. Or not. Or whether you want gilded Empire furniture. Or velvet or tartan or paisley-lined walls. Or would you rather your walls leather panelled? You can have either three windows or seven looking out on to the Old Town rooftops, Princes St and the Forth of Firth.

You can sleep the night in the "Guardroom" or the "Armoury", or the library which the pop singer Danni Minogue described as "a lust den".

The hotel, a 16th-century merchant's house, has an award-winning restaurant serving, under its heraldic painted ceiling, Scrabster monkfish, Isle of Mull cheddar scones and scallops, Oban oysters, Arran beets, Scotch border beef and lots of Scottish salmon.

This has optimistically been dubbed the "Scottish Year of Food and Drink". At The Witchery you can have breakfast by candlelight and drink any time of day. You can also bathe in a chapel. The room is cluttered with tasselled damask curtains and bric-a-brac. Military uniforms are casually draped over chairs. The Witchery is the only hotel where you can go to bed if you wish in a Buzby, which gives an entirely new meaning to "the night-cap".

The Witchery, a former Satanists' meeting place, you are told tongue-in-cheek, also organises tours exploring the supernataural, grisly and sadistic side of the burgh, following in the footsteps of grave robbers and stranglers. Your escort is the Chief-In-Spectre.

The Witchery's sister hotel is the five-star, boutique baronial 1687 Prestonfield House, which is equally decadent in decor. A suite is named after Benjamin Franklin, who stayed there but probably did not laze and lather away in the huge silver leaf sleigh bath. ("Neatness and sweetness all around/ These we at Prestonfield House found", 1759.)

The hotel's "Rhubarb" restaurant celebrates one of Scotland's most unsung dicks - Sir Alexander Dick who introduced rhubarb to Scotland in the 18th century. Such bittersweet history.

CHECKLIST

Getting there: Emirates flies daily from Auckland to Dubai and on to Scotland.