The accidental holiday home

Good evening, many of us have experienced that sinking feeling when you think you’ve bought your ‘ideal’ home, but on closer inspection realise that there’s a little more remodelling and remedial work than you anticipated. It’s called buyer’s remorse. Few of us - if any - have walked away with the keys to a property that is not only ‘on the point of collapse’, but is also in a different location to where we thought we were buying. Such was the case with Cal Hunter and Claire Segeren, who believed they were bidding on an apartment in Glasgow, but ended up buying a dilapidated Victorian villa in Dunoon, 35 miles away. Something to do with fast-talking auctioneers and mixed up lot numbers. But Cal and Claire’s story has a happy ending, albeit after four-and-a-half years of back-breaking restoration work. The project was so daunting in fact that it spawned a warts-and-all DIY documentary and they garnered more than 300,000 Instagram followers. But now the couple have opened up their property to holidaymakers. Our writer and his daughters were the first through the door, and this week we offer you a glimpse inside the Scottish ruin turned shore-front refuge on the Firth of Clyde.