How Banjo and Ro Beale created Ulva House, their magical Hebridean island hotel

At 5pm on Ulva, when the ferryman makes his final journey across the 0.3-mile stretch of water from Mull, the island seems to breathe a sigh of relief. All day, the sturdy little barge has puttered back and forth, ferrying the walkers who have come to explore the craggy coastline, and the holidaymakers in search of a good lunch at the island’s wee pearl of a café.

As the sun goes over the yardarm, only Ulva’s 18 full-time residents remain and order is restored. The crystal-clear water is still, the jetty is bathed in honeyed light and the only sound is the crackle of wood in the café’s fire pit. Once the flames have settled and the first beers have been cracked open, scallops dropped off by the fishermen will find their way onto the grill along with garlic butter and fistfuls of fresh herbs.

You can understand why this is interior designer Banjo Beale’s favourite time of day on the tiny Hebridean island. ‘Suddenly it’s all yours again,’ he says, passing around slices of homemade focaccia and cans of local ale. ‘It’s so great to share it during the day, but then it becomes your little secret and you get it all to yourself. There’s just a wave of calm that washes over.’

You would imagine most on Ulva share this feeling, but Banjo may have more cause to relish the peace. Banjo and Ro’s Grand Island Hotel – the BBC TV series about the house he and his husband, Ro, have spent the past two years turning from a once-grand but latterly crumbling mansion into a beautiful boutique hotel – has made him something of a local celebrity.

Originally from Australia, the couple fell in love with Ulva in 2022. They had been living on Mull for more than a decade, with Ro working as a cheesemaker and Banjo, a former winner of BBC TV’s Interior Design Masters, building his career. Then Banjo was tasked with renovating a bothy on Ulva for another BBC TV show, Designing the Hebrides. A storm meant that he was trapped for days on end in the bothy while he did it up.

‘There was something so magical about it,’ he recalls. ‘It felt like a spiritual experience. As we were walking back to the ferry exhausted, I asked local farmer Phil what they were doing at the house [a Grade B-listed building]. He told me it was in ruins and there were no plans for it. We busted into it and, from that moment, I was thinking, Oh my gosh, we’ve got to do something with this.’

An idea began to crystallise – a vision for a beautiful destination hotel, where guests would arrive by ferry and immerse themselves in this wild landscape. They’d spend their days exploring the bluebell woods and beaches, then return to a room with a roll-top bath and soft sheets and pour a negroni. ‘It’s rough luxury,’ says Banjo, who convinced the board (the island is community owned) to grant them a long lease in order to turn the house into something that would both save the building and benefit the community. ‘You’ll have to be quite intrepid to make it here. You’re coming in on a ferry, down a single-track road, on another ferry, then up a goat track to the house – through the mud and the rain and the sleet and the midges. You’ll be greeted with a gorgeous cocktail and ω yummy food and lovely linens, but your water will be peaty and your shoes will be muddy.’

Every pot of paint and sheet of verdigris copper has made that same journey to the hotel, which, when I visit in June, is still a work in progress. Yet it already appears just as Banjo envisioned it, like visiting the home of your most stylish, slightly wacky friends for good food, strong drinks and jolly company. ‘Any designer would attest that interior design is 99 per cent logistics and one per cent the pretty stuff,’ says Banjo. ‘It’s a massive challenge to get anything here. Everything has to come on the world’s smallest ferry – 4-metre-long bars; my menagerie of animals; a rainforest of plants and pots and trunks and trinkets.’

The design nods to the landscape the house sits within, as well as to Banjo and Ro’s Aussie roots. A mural blooms from the entranceway to the upper landing, with tropical plants on the walls of the ground floor morphing into Highland flora and fauna as you walk up the stairs. There is already a well-stocked honour bar. The kitchen centres around a large wooden island, where chef Ro will turn out beautiful, casual meals. There is an artfully dilapidated orangery to lounge in, though you might need to share it with Grampa, the couple’s soppy greyhound, or even Ginger, one of their three pigs.

For everything else, there is Ulva – all seven square miles of it. During the day, Sam Yates runs The Boathouse, the café that’s put the island on the map, thanks to a seasonal menu that makes the best of what the area has to offer. On the day I arrive, the shelves are filled with freshly baked cakes, including a tempting plum, almond and polenta number – Sam’s recipe for which is provided left. For lunch, there are braised leeks with crab, langoustines, local smoked fish and cullen skink.

By 9am, the first visitors are here in search of a flat white. By lunch, The Boathouse (which Banjo and Ro co-run with Sam) is filled with people. The maintenance man arrives with (inexplicably) a crate of salads. ‘This guy won the award for Tobermory’s best leek,’ says Sam. He’s here to fix the boiler, but he’s also keen to know if the boys would like to take on his hens. Banjo has developed a habit for acquiring animals, so a flock of hens may well be on the cards by the time the summer’s out. In the afternoon, a table is cleared for the volunteers who keep the hotel’s walled garden going. They tuck into slices of cake before Rhuri Munro, the ferryman, takes them back to Mull.

At the end of the day, a boat pulls up and a call goes out to chef Sam: ‘Do you want an octopus?!’ He runs down the jetty to fetch it before striding back to the fire to check on the scallops, which are hissing on the grill.

Ulva is a place that runs on people power and a dream. You have to like hard work to live here, but you also have to be the sort of person who, when the sun is low in the sky and the work is done, wants to gather around a table on the shore, crack open a beer, eat scallops and relish being the only souls here. When the doors to Ulva House open next summer, Banjo, Ro and Grampa will be waiting on the jetty to welcome all comers into their world.

By Eleanor Steafel