Autumn – Embo House Dornoch

Spend a Highland Traitors weekend steeped in intrigue, deception, and unforgettable fun at Embo House, with your facilitated, private, Traitors experience. Designed for groups of 8 to 16 guests, this exclusive-use stay transforms a luxurious Highland retreat into the perfect setting for strategy, suspicion, and surprise.

The Traitors

Embo House comfortably sleeps up to 16 guests in eight beautifully appointed double bedrooms. Whether you’re gathering friends, family, or colleagues, the house offers flexibility and ensures you can all relax and enjoy your stay before and after your traitorous endeavours!

Embo House’s very own “Claudia Winkleman” runs our Highland Traitors Experiences

Embo House’s Highland Traitors weekends are for a minimum stay of three nights, which will give ample time to immerse yourselves in the house, the area and the game, using Embo’s characterful spaces to full effect. The atmospheric library becomes the ideal setting for hushed alliances and secret plotting, while the bar offers a lively backdrop for discussions, accusations, and dramatic reveals.

Your Highland Traitors weekend includes use of the 6-wo/man hot-tub, and can be catered*, part-catered* or self-catered, giving you complete control over your weekend. You and your group will have exclusive use of the house and extensive gardens – and can create the exact atmosphere you want—whether that’s relaxed and social or intensely competitive. Guests are responsible for organising and bringing all participants and prizes, making it a truly personal and private event tailored to your group dynamic.

Best of all, the Traitors game itself is included at no extra cost AND we are offering the house to rent at a special price of £3,600. (15% discount) during the months of October, November and December 26, (Christmas excluded) and February/March 27.
The game can take 3-5 hours and can be played once or twice during your stay. Highland Traitors weekends can run Thursday to Saturday (leave Sunday morning) or Friday to Sunday (leave Monday).

A Highland Traitors weekend at Embo House is more than just a getaway—it’s an immersive social experience where every conversation matters, every glance could be a clue, and no one is quite who they seem. Perfect for celebrations, team-building, or simply an extraordinary escape, it’s a weekend you and your guests won’t forget anytime soon!

Highland Traitors Weekends at Embo House

Embo House is just an hour’s easy drive from Inverness, where the airport and train station have daily arrivals from around the UK.

*NB: Any catering is charged extra. Menu options available on request. Alternatively, your group can eat in the great local restaurants.

Just in from a lovely autumn walk around Embo House, Dornoch. It reminded me how wonderful wildlife in Sutherland can be.

Wildlife in Sutherland: Wild Geese rising

At this time of year the barley stubble to the front of Embo House provides perfect camouflage for a huge flock of barnacle geese fresh in from the Arctic. My presence triggers a cacophony, as around a thousand of them clatter from the ground, squawking their alarm. At first they rise slowly, confused as a swarm of locusts. But higher up the vast army start to circle in formation, and the outer echelons form a classical ‘V’. It really is a breathtaking natural spectacle.

Wildlife in Sutherland: Embo Beach

Down to the beach now where there is always some wildlife busy at work. Last winter I was awed by the vast numbers of guillemots floating close together to form living rafts on the calm sea. It is rougher today so most of the birds are either on the wing or scavenging amongst clumps of weed pulled up from the Dornoch Firth and deposited along the beach. But I am charmed by the groups of humble dunlins effortlessly dancing from rock to rock to dodge each incoming wave. Further out, a harbour seal pops her head up to keep an eye on proceedings whilst a pair of oyster catchers provide a low fly-past with their shrill ‘kleep, kleep’ call cutting through the drum-roll of the surf.

I head towards home and the bird-life provides yet more welcome distractions. The heron that lives near the burn rises and flies back towards the ponds at Embo House – its’s wing-beat as serene as an eagle but behind it’s legs trail ungainly. Our dog performs the duty of any self-respecting Labrador and puts up a couple of pheasants. This in turn agitates the swarms of geese whose clamour carries miles on the breeze as they again resume their aerial manoeuvres.

So I return grateful to have ventured out. Even on the shortest local walk, wildlife in Sutherland can provide an unmissable backdrop.