Bob Dylan should know where the Highlands are now — he and his brother have bought a patch of Scottish glen.

The singer, 65, and his brother, David Zimmerman, are said to have spent £2.2 million on Aultmore House, an Edwardian hideaway in 25 acres of woodland near Nethy Bridge, Inverness-shire, in the shadow of the Cairngorms.

Dylan has long expressed a fondness for Scotland, but his knowledge of its geography has been less than perfect. In his 1997 song Highlands he placed them “way up in the Border country, far from the towns”. His new home is 200 miles north of the Borders.

The singer spent a week last spring at the ten-bedroom Grade A listed mansion, then a five-star B&B that could be rented out for £3,000 a night and whose interiors had featured in the BBC drama Monarch of the Glen. Aultmore was built early in the last century for H. Millet, the owner of a premier Moscow department store.

The purchase, under the family name Zimmerman, caused a flurry of excitement in Nethy Bridge last year. However, since then the millionaire musician, writer and broadcaster has not made a return visit, although his brother has been spotted in the village.

Knight Frank, the selling agents, said initially that a “very private person” had bought Aultmore House. But yesterday they confirmed that it had been purchased by “a member of Bob Dylan’s family”.

Despite his celebrity there is no guarantee that the singer, a keen golfer who recently confessed to having a handicap of 17, will be able to join the local Abernethy club. “Mr Dylan will have to apply in writing just like everyone else and be vetted by the committee,” Jack McCool, the club treasurer, said.

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