The Scottish Treehouses Where the Selling Point Is That Nothing Works

The Leckie Estate runs to 1,500 acres on the southern edge of the Trossachs, and the drive in sets the tone before anyone reaches a building. Past the gates, past sheep and cattle, then deeper into woodland thick with purple rhododendron, beech and birch. On a still midsummer afternoon the heat comes off the landscape in a way that makes the violet peaks to the north look like a mirage.

The four cabins at the end of that drive are named Wren, Chiffchaff, Siskin and Goldfinch. Strictly they are not treehouses. They are clad in charred pine and raised on stilts among mature oak and pine, which amounts to the same experience with better engineering.

Built from the wood it stands in

Louisa and Simon Dickson built all four from Leckie Estate timber, to a brief of seclusion and sustainability, and the restraint is the point. There is no wifi. There is no television.

An elevated walkway crosses a burn and carries you from the living space out through the canopy to a broad dining deck, with the Gargunnock Hills visible beyond. Birdsong is constant. Sunlight comes through the leaves in pieces.

Inside, it is birch plywood, high ceilings and a spare Scandinavian-Scottish register: kitchen-diner, wood-burning stove, a large double with floor-to-ceiling windows, and a small bunk room next door that will settle any argument about where the children sleep. Dogs are allowed.

The family details are not decoration. The ceramics are by Simon's father, the potter Aly Dickson. The paintings are by Louisa's mother, the artist Fenella Bound.

The wet room is stocked with soaps and creams from the Scottish skincare brand Siabann and opens onto a screened wooden terrace with an enormous zinc bath. It is possible to spend the better part of an hour in it, chin-deep, watching swallows work the air overhead as the light goes.

No wifi and no television, fifty minutes from an international airport

Or, if you would rather not lie in a bath

The estate is not short of things to do, which is what separates this from a cottage with a view.

There is cycling, golf and Munro-bagging. There is a farm tour that comes with lunch and Highland cattle. A grouse moor sits at the top of the hill, and the woodland trails open onto small natural pools cold enough to be worth the walk. Foxes, badgers, deer, red squirrels, buzzards and red kites are all resident.

The lochs of the Trossachs National Park are close, and a private sailing trip on Loch Lomond or Loch Katrine can be arranged with a hamper. Leckie will also bring in a foraging expert to walk guests round the estate, a local chef to cook whatever comes back, and an astronomer to make sense of the sky afterwards.

Ben Venue, at 2,386 feet and covered in heather, is the walk that earns the view over the national park. It is also the walk that justifies booking a massage on your own deck afterwards, under the boughs of an oak, which is a better recovery plan than a hot shower.

The logistics, which are the real luxury

Food is handled. The Old Leckie Farm Shop delivers grass-fed Highland beef, outdoor-bred pork and lamb, and eggs, herbs and salad leaves to the door. The eggs are frequently an hour old. The local pub does good food and is a short walk through pleasant country. The Scottish Antique and Arts Centre at Doune is twenty minutes by car for anyone who wants an afternoon of rummaging.

Rates start at £245 a night for up to six people, with a two-night minimum.

Why this works

Romantic ideas about living in trees go back a very long way, and most of what gets built on the strength of them is a platform with a ladder. What the Dicksons have understood is that the appeal was never the height. It is the enforced simplicity, and the fact that somebody else has dealt with the logistics of it.

Remove the wifi and the television from a house in a city and you have deprivation. Remove them from a heated cabin in a wood, with a zinc bath, a stove, eggs at the door and Stirling Castle fifteen minutes away, and you have the thing people are actually paying for. Fifty minutes from an international airport, which is the detail that makes the whole proposition work.