Braemar – the Highland Games venue, Aberdeenshire, Royal Deeside

Posted on 12 February 2025 by Katrina

When we visited the Aberdeenshire area back in July we decided to have a look at the arena where they hold the Highland Games. It’s something I’ve seen on the news many times over the years – usually on the news with THE Queen in attendance in her tartan and tweed, while the rain battered down.

To be honest I wasn’t all that sure that I wanted to check out that area at all, but the teeny village only has a large Victorian hotel which is confusingly named The Fife Arms, and a couple of wee gift shops, or maybe it was only one, anyway it was shut so there wasn’t really anything else to do, except hang over a bridge to look at the River Dee. It was only when we got back home that I discovered that you can go for a riverside walk at Braemar. Below it doesn’t look much more than a burn (stream) but it was July and allegedly the weather had been good in June although we missed it all as we were in the Netherlands. Further research has me thinking that it might be the River Clunie which apparently flows into the Dee.

Below is a view of the scenery from the highand games field. I’m not sure what it’s called officially – a park, arena or maybe just a field.

The glazed shelter with the royal coat of arms on it is presumably where the so called VIPs view it all from, sheltered from the usual rain or if the weather is better – from the midges – maybe. There are folded chairs all around the place but I suspect parts of it are standing room only on the day.

This wee stage in the photo below must be for the Highland dancing exhibitions, that takes me back although I never danced at a Highland Games in my day.

So it’s just as well that the games park turned out to be quite interesting, and really quite stylish compared with the other places that the various Highland Games take place in, this one is definitely a step up from the usual local field.

Duff House, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 10 September 2024 by Katrina

We’ve been doing a lot of travelling around over the summer, and I haven’t blogged about most of our visits to places. It was back in July that we travelled up to the north-east of Scotland to Aberdeenshire for a few days and one of the places we went to was Duff House, doesn’t it look fab?! You can read about it here.

Over the years it has been used as a private home, a hotel, sanatorium and prisoner-of- war camp. It was designed by William Adam, father of Robert. As often happens, the owner William Duff and the architect fell out and the house was never completed to the original plans. The house was built between 1735 and 1740.

Apparently I took 44 photos of the inside of the house, I’ll just inflict a few of them on you. Below is the library which might have looked entirely different in its heyday as the owners of the house decided that they didn’t want to live there, they had a better house! They gave the house away but sold most of the contents, so it has been furnished from elsewhere.

The dining room.

The house is now in the care of Historic Scotland and is part of the National Galleries of Scotland so it has a great collection of art. It’s well worth going to see even although it is fairly far flung from most people in the UK.

The architect William Adam lived in Kirkcaldy, just a stone’s throw from where we used to live, but someone in ‘authority’ at the council way back decreed that the Adam house should be demolished – and so it was – there is now just a boulder where the house was with a sign on it saying Gladney House was here! This is how it looked.

Crathie Kirk, Ballater, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 2 September 2024 by Katrina

We visited Crathie Kirk in Ballater for the first time when we visited Aberdeenshire a few weeks ago. I had of course seen it often on TV as it’s the nearest church to Balmoral, but somehow its surroundings didn’t look like I had imagined them to be. Unfortunately by the time we got there the kirk was closed.

There’s something more than a wee bit Scandinavian about the design of this wee church I think. Scottish churches aren’t known for having porches at all, but it’s an attractive design, and as the area is well known for rough weather it’s a handy place to shake off the rain or snow.

I didn’t tarry long at the back of the church as a large barking mad dog ran out of the undergrowth heading straight for me. No doubt he thought he was defending his territory, I quickly snapped the photo below and departed!

It’s a short walk over a bridge spanning the River Dee below, which leads to the gates of Balmoral.

As you can see we had really great weather while we were away.

People were just coming out of the gates when we got there, it was closing for the day. Maybe next time we’ll go to Balmoral first and have a walk around the grounds.

The gates have GR and MR on them for King George V and Queen Mary.

Portsoy, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 25 August 2024 by Katrina

Portsoy in Aberdeenshire was one of the many places that we visited a few weeks ago when we drove north to Aberdeenshire for a few days. The harbour dates back to 1692 and the photos wouldn’t really do it justice, it’s a series of small harbours interlinked. It means that there are safe areas for children to play in with quite shallow water, when the tide is out anyway. When we were there it was crowded with kids having great fun, the water would have been relatively warm too. So I wasn’t able to take photos of those parts because of all the people there.

The harbour has been used in various TV and films, such as Peaky Blinders, Whisky Galore! and various BBC period dramas, as well as in a Tennents lager advert.

The photo below is of the grass at the edge of the harbour, as you can see there’s a modern sculpture of a dolphin there.

I love just about any kind of ruin and this window is just about all that remains of a cottage above the harbour, presumably the weather played havoc with the rest of it over the years.

Portsoy is apparently famous for the marble which used to be mined there, there’s a marble shop there where you can buy various sorts of marble and carved stones. Portsoy marble was used in the Palace of Versailles, the marble is really red and green serpentine. It’s a lovely wee place, I would visit it again, if we are ever in that area again.

Leith Hall, Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Posted on 11 April 2023 by Katrina

It’s months since we visited Aberdeenshire, but it’s only now that I’m getting around to blogging about our visit to Leith Hall near Kennethmont. The oldest part of the building dates from 1650, but it has been added on to over the centuries. Like many such grand houses it was made into a temporary Red Cross hospital during World War 1.

In 1945 Leith Hall was presented to the National Trust for Scotland. As you can see from the photo below it’s a good place to have a snack or some ice-cream.

This house apparently has quite a reputation for being haunted and according to Wiki the writer Elizabeth Byrd and her husband rented 16 rooms in Leith Hall in the 1960s and she later wrote about her paranormal experiences there! The hall is set in a 286 acre estate.

In 1745 the then owner of the hall fought on the Jacobite side, below are some relics of the time.

Strangely there’s a scarf which apparently belonged to Napoleon on show, nice scarf but the photo is blurry as you can see.

It’s the gardens that impressed me most though. We had a lovely afternoon here last August on what was a beautiful day, it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re in the Aberdeenshire area. This place isn’t very far from Balmoral, but we decided to leave that for another trip. I sort of wish we had gone then as the Queen was there at the time – for the last time.

Kildrummy Castle, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 20 October 2022 by Katrina

We had to have two goes at visiting Kildrummy Castle when we were in Aberdeenshire for a few days in August. The first time we tried to go there it was shut, normally as it’s a ruin you would have been able just to wander around it after hours, but for some reason we weren’t allowed to do that at this castle. It dates from the 1200s so I suppose it can be forgiven for being a ruin.

The castle was originally the seat of the Earl of Mar but over the years it has been under siege several times and so has changed hands, it’s thought that the English King Edward I took it over at some point.

You can’t really tell from what is left of the building but the design of it was similar to French castles, as so many Scottish castles are, they looked to France and Italy for inspiration and obviously didn’t want to be like English castles.

Certainly Kildrummy was inhabited by some of the Bruce family, including Robert’s brother and sister, but its downfall came much later than that at 1716 after the failure of the Jacobite ‘rebellion’ the previous year. Obviously the then owners backed the wrong side!

The information boards give you some idea of how the place would have looked in its heyday. The one below shows the Snow Tower which was the castle keep, one of the tallest buildings of its time.

As you can see from the photo of a model below, it was quite elegant in its day. Even although it’s a ruin it’s still worth seeing.

Dyce Symbol Stones, Saint Fergus’s Church, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Posted on 30 August 2022 by Katrina

We visited several standing stones and symbol stones while we were in Aberdeenshire recently, including the stones at the ruin of Saint Fergus’s Church in Dyce.

As you can see from the photo below it was a sunny day, the stones are just behind the front wall which you can see below.

They’ve built a wee canopy to keep the worst of the weather off them. The church itself dates from the 13th century, but the Pictish symbol stones date from the 800s and they’re in remarkably good condition.

Before the 13th century church there was probably a wooden church on the site which would have had these stones as decoration, there’s also part of a broken font. We weren’t the only people looking at the stones, there was a lovely man who was a retired stonemason and he had worked on the church years before, so he pointed out things of interest to us, incuding the ‘green mannie’ on the corner of the building which you can just see in the photo below, he had actually discovered it when he was repointing the church, you might have to click to enlarge it. I always think of the green man as being a Celtic symbol, but he was also popular in England I believe, supposed to be a good luck symbol.

They certainly chose a beautiful location for the church as just across the road from it is the River Don in the photo below, there are just a few houses in this area, what a great view they wake up to in the morning!

Castle Fraser, Aberdeenshire – the walled garden

Posted on 10 May 2022 by Katrina

As you can see from the photo below box topiary is quite a feature of the walled garden at Castle Fraser, they don’t seem to have a problem with box blight – fingers crossed for them!

Aberdeenshire is quite far north so it takes the plants a bit longer to get going in the spring.

I absolutely love walled gardens though and I still miss the high wall that we had in our old garden.

Click on the photos to enlarge them if you want to see them in more detail.

There’s an unusual old sundial in the garden.

Despite Castle Fraser being fairly far north they are still able to grow fruit, thanks to the walls, and the apple blossom was just beginning to flower when we were there a few weeks ago, it’ll be looking great now I imagine.

Castle Fraser, Aberdeenshire

Posted on 8 May 2022 by Katrina

A few weeks ago we went up to Aberdeenshire, for one night only, it was mainly so that Jack could go to a football match, but as you can see we managed to visit Castle Fraser too, which is good as I’m really not much interested in football. The earliest part of the castle dates from 1575, you can read about it here.

It was a grey morning and really quite freezing and slightly misty for mid April.

The castle is in the Scots baronial style which is more akin to the pepperpot towers so beloved of medieval European castles than anything that you would find elsewhere in the UK.

The photo below is of the Great Hall.

Below is the library, a room I could have spent a long time in, apart from the books it was the warmest!

The doorways are very ornate.

We of course slogged up to the top of the tower to get a good view of the surrounding area.

In the distance we could see the walled garden, so we made our way carefully back down the long spiral staircase so we could go and get a closer look at it. I’ll leave the photos of the garden for another blogpost. Castle Fraser is definitely worth seeing

Glitter of Mica by Jessie Kesson

Posted on 19 May 2020 by Katrina

Glitter of Mica by the Scottish author Jessie Kesson was first published in 1963. Previously I’ve read Another Time Another Place and The White Bird Passes and I enjoyed those ones but I didn’t like this one nearly as much.

The setting is rural Aberdeenshire in the north-east of Scotland, the parish of Caldwell and the book begins in the 1930s. Hugh Riddell is a farm worker who is never kept on after his year of contracted work is up, which means that every year he has to find a new job in the area at a different farm. His wife is sick fed up with the constant moving, she can’t even plant a garden as she would be working for whoever would take over the tied house that goes with the farm work. They had a son, also Hugh and it’s his family that this book is mainly involved with.

The marriage of Hugh and his wife Isa isn’t any more successful than that of his parents, Hugh despises Isa and she seems afraid of him, they did manage to produce a daughter though, Helen does well at school and goes to university, but her mother is disappointed that she is only doing a diploma in social sciences and won’t come back with the MA that past ‘scholars’ have attained.

Helen gets work as a youth worker and unknown to her father starts a relationship with Charlie Anson, someone else that Hugh despises. As you can imagine it all ends in tears.

There are some flashes of humour in this book such as ….for she was a tight woman and had she been a ghost she would have grudged giving you a fright.

The characters in this book remind me, if I ever needed to be reminded of why I am ‘pining for the west’ as they are almost all miserable and mean spirited and are their own worst enemies. Love doesn’t seem to enter into anyone’s life, people get married because they have to marry someone and quickly go right off them it seems. There’s only one character who seems to have any human warmth – and she’s the talk of the place – being a wee bit too friendly with some of the local men. But the women have to admit that she always hangs out a ‘bonnie white washing.’ High praise indeed among the women.

This is supposedly Jessie Kesson’s best book but I just found it too depressing, I have no doubts that it is a very true portrait of the area and the times. Some readers wallow in misery, but it’s not for me

You can read what Jack thought of the book here.

Pining for the West

Meanderings about recipes, books, craft and more

Tag Archives: Aberdeenshire