Forget Claudia - The Real Star of 'The Traitors' is the North Highlands
Millions watch the accusations, banishments and carefully concealed murders, yet The Traitors is quietly selling something else to the nation. From Ardross Castle to Loch Glass, Fyrish Monument and the Orrin Dam, the North Highlands provide the drama before anybody has told the first lie.
Whenever filming begins for The Traitors, secrecy descends upon the production, although maintaining it in the North Highlands is easier said than done. The castle may be hidden behind private gates, but camera crews, production vehicles and famous faces arriving at Inverness Airport are considerably harder to disguise. Local newspapers soon begin naming the likely contestants, particularly for The Celebrity Traitors, while dedicated hotel watchers attempt to calculate who remains in the game by observing who appears to have left. The programme may be built upon secrecy, but the Highlands have eyes everywhere.
The castle at the centre of it all is Ardross Castle, a magnificent nineteenth-century Scottish Baronial mansion near Alness in Ross-shire. Its turrets, formal gardens and wooded estate provide the setting for breakfast speculation, private conversations and the increasingly heated encounters around the Round Table. The castle is privately owned and is not open as a conventional visitor attraction or hotel, although it can be hired exclusively for weddings, corporate events and private gatherings. Accommodation is therefore available only as part of those arrangements, rather than through individually rented rooms or holiday cottages.
Ardross may be the programme’s theatrical heart, but the landscape surrounding it gives The Traitors its scale. Missions have taken contestants onto Loch Glass, through Highland woodland, up the steep path to the Fyrish Monument and onto the monumental face of the Orrin Dam. Boat of Garten station, farther south in the Cairngorms, has also provided the memorable railway arrival seen at the beginning of several series. Some locations are immediately recognisable, while others are transformed by careful camera angles, props and the sort of weather that the Highlands can provide without consulting a production schedule.
For the North Highlands, the value of the programme extends far beyond the castle gates. The Traitors and its celebrity edition attract enormous audiences across age groups that conventional tourism advertising might struggle to reach, presenting the region as mysterious, beautiful and filled with possibilities. The first Celebrity Traitors became the most-watched British television programme of its year, while interest in the castle and its surroundings produced a measurable increase in online searches for Highland locations. Viewers may arrive for betrayal, suspicion and Claudia Winkleman’s extraordinary wardrobe, but week after week they are also invited into our landscape. That might prove to be the programme’s most successful deception of all.
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