Ballater Area

Ballater

Alford Railway Museum

Glenbuchat Castle

Area Main Page

Ballater, just eight miles east of Balmoral, has strong royal connections. Many stores in this well manicured village display the coats-of-arms signifying royal patronage.

Queen Victoria used Ballater Station when she travelled to Balmoral and though the line is now long closed, the old station buildings still stand and now serve as a museum and tourist information centre.

Balmoral Castle is the summer retreat of the Royal Family, and so is only open to the public from April to July. Crathie Church is the local church and where the Royals' worship when in residence. Both are popular local tourist attractions, as is the nearby Royal Lochnagar distillery, complete with its visitor centre.

Further east the Dee flows past first the villages of Aboyne and Kincardine O'Neil, and then the larger settlement of Banchory.

Running parallel to Deeside to the north is the less well known and wilder valley of Donside, through which the River Don makes its way to the sea. This has been a disputed area over the centuries and above all else that makes it an excellent area for castle collectors.

There are Undiscovered Scotland Feature Pages covering three of the Donside castles. These are Corgarff Castle, wonderfully restored to its role as a Government barracks after the 1745 rebellion; Glenbuchat Castle, an interesting "Z" shaped tower house; and Kildrummy Castle, the ruins of what was once one of the mightiest of Scotland's castles, and certainly one of its most besieged.

One of the villages forming the scattered community of Strathdon is Bellabeg, famous for its signpost to the settlement of Lost. In the forests north of here is the wonderful Lost Gallery.

North again and you come to beautiful Craigievar Castle, where the sheer number of visitors has threatened the structure of the castle. This is close to the village of Alford, the home of the Grampian Transport Museum and the Alford Valley Railway Museum.