A WATERFRONT setting looking out to hills and woodland couldn't be a more fitting location to celebrate the work of acclaimed architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and enjoy a cup of tea at the same time.

The two passions of businesswoman Anne Mulhern came together more than 30 years ago when she opened the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, painstakingly recreating the dazzling Room de Luxe run by Kate Cranston at the start of the 20th century.

Now she has opened a pop-up tea room, Mackintosh on the Loch, at Loch Lomond Shores, tapping into the artist's great love of nature and and the nation's enthusiasm for drinking tea.

"We're always looking out for plans to expand but it has to be right," says Anne, who opened the Willow Tea Rooms in 1983 in Sauchiehall Street and in 1996 in Buchanan Street.

"This location at Loch Lomond Shores fits in, don't ask me why. When I went home and told my husband he questioned it but when he came along to look at it he got it. We came here and had a look around and, of course, Hill House is in Helensburgh so there is Mackintosh connection with the area."

The pop-up at Balloch first appeared over the Easter weekend and will stay open until the end of October. In the meantime businesses have been asked to tender for the busy spot and Anne will be making a bid.

Surrounded by floor to ceiling glass walls, the spacious venue, that also sells merchandising, has a terrace for sunny days.

As the summer progresses a steady stream of coach tours bring holidaymakers to Loch Lomond but the tea room is already proving popular with locals.

"We had a gentleman in today who he came in last week for the first time and the girls have said he has been in every single day since then," says Anne.

"Another lady has been in regularly and is working her way through the menu. She says she wants to try something different every day."

Tiered cake stands are loaded with meringues, scones and fat slices of whisky and sultana loaf while strawberry tarts covered in gooey syrup sit alongside carrot cakes in a nearby display cabinet. It is clear that the pop-up tea room has a menu as delicious as the regular offering to hungry visitors in Glasgow.

"Meringues and empire biscuits are probably the best sellers out of everything we make," says Anne, who works in the kitchen every day herself to produce the ever-growing selection of gluten-free products.

"When I first started out it was very basic, we had four teas on the menu - English Breakfast, Early Grey, Ceylon and Assam - then over the years that has grown and we now have 28 different teas.

"The gluten-free range has grown from no reason other than listening to customers who tell us what they want. In Sauchiehall Street one of our girls is a vegan and she has started making vegan scones and biscuits."

Trends might come and go but traditional waitress service, loose leaf tea and those mouthwatring cakes will never leave the menu.

Anne's fascination with Glasgow's tea rooms began when she was a little girl growing up in the East End and remembers going out on Saturday afternoons with her mother and grandmother.

"We used to go to the Ceylon Tea Room in Buchanan Street, and Treron's had a tea room in their department store. I remember one tea room in Sauchiehall Street always had cracking strawberry tarts in the window.

"The cake stands used to sit on the table and you chose a cake and told the girl what you had."

After taking redundancy from her job at the WD & HO Wills factory on Alexandra Parade in Dennistoun, Anne was looking for something to do and remembered her love of going out for tea.

This was in the 1980s when tea rooms were closing and fast food was taking over the high street. In a forward-thinking move that Kate Cranston would be proud of, Anne held firm to her idea and was ahead of the pack when the trend for tea rooms took off again in the 21st century.

The Sauchiehall Street venue now has a secure home after campaigning by Anne when the future of the building was under threat was followed by the setting up of the Willow Tea Rooms Trust.

Much-needed renovations and repairs will start next year and the Room de Luxe "will be gorgeous again", according to Anne.

Synonymous with elegance and good taste, Miss Cranston's name will live on now after Anne bought the rights to it. Her tea specialists will create a blend and a range of bakery items are already in the pipeline.

Kate Cranston would surely have approved, especially if she had the chance to sit with a cuppa looking out across the water at Balloch to the Highlands in the distance.

Tickets for a talk, Temperance at the Willow, on Father's Day, June 21, cost £5, including tea and a cake. Mackintosh on the Loch, Loch Lomond Shores, Balloch. Visit www.willowtearooms.co.uk