New Keiss hotel reignites community spirit
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
A KEISS hotel has taken on a new lease of life to create a vibrant community hub in the village.
For five years the Sinclair Bay Hotel had been up for sale – and, with the closure of the last village shop a couple of years ago, there seemed to be a "real need to bring back a sense of community spirit", according to new owners John and Nicola Russell.
The couple put in a huge effort, filling numerous skips along the way, to resurrect the hotel and give a focal point for locals to visit along with numerous North Coast 500 tourists heading to or from John O'Groats.
"When the local shop closed just under two years ago a lot of Keissers thought the village was just going to die. There was no social hub or anywhere to meet," John said.
"Now that we've taken over, the hotel has been hosting local meetings, we have a special day for pensioners every second week and we even do takeaways for folk so they don't have to go off into Wick. Our staff is mainly made up from local people too."
The hotel has also been hosting meetings by the local community council and the couple say that villagers are telling them they can't believe the difference.
"They tell us it's so clean and fresh and friendly," John said. "The place was pretty run down when we took it over. I fixed up buildings as a job, so I did a lot of the work here myself.
"It was a long-term ambition of mine to run a pub so I did my homework and tried to see what local people really wanted."
The couple had their work cut out for them as the hotel had been on the market for five years and was very run down. "There were even old John O'Groat Journals under the carpet that dated back to 1974," said John.
It opened in May and started doing a few meals a night at first but then found demand was rising and ended up having to cater for up to 30 meals in an evening.
Nicola said: "We sold our house at Broadhaven and now live here in the hotel. For the first week or two we worried we might have made a mistake with all the work that needed doing but it's all been worth it in the end."
She said that doing the "homework" beforehand really paid dividends so they could work out what people really wanted. "We went around a few different places to work out what would work best for our menus and suchlike."
After two skips and four 14ft farm trailers of rubbish were carted off to the dump at Seater, the hotel began to take shape and they went down to the bar to greet the locals after moving in.
"We were totally mobbed the following night and it's been doing really well since. It really feels like a lifeline to the locals," John said.
With the scenes from the popular TV drama The Crown due to be filmed at Keiss harbour the Sinclair Bay Hotel might soon be playing host to "royalty" as well.
