Beautiful Britain - Loch Muick, Aberdeenshire

Hi there everyone

We are back in Scotland, in the beautiful Aberdeenshire, for this week's post. We just have so much to share from our week's visit back in June with mum and dad.

When returning from our earlier visit to Balmoral we had taken a bit of an off piste route and we'd seen the signs for Loch Muick. We'd all agreed that we definitely wanted to come back and have a look and today was the day.

The Loch is on the Balmoral Estate and there is a 7.75mile circuit walk, which takes in the impressive Glas-allt Shiel house built by Queen Victoria, from where there is an optional detour to see some waterfalls.

We weren't planning on completing the walk, but did hope that we would at least get to see the Loch.

It was a fair old drive from where we'd seen the sign and we were beginning to wonder if we'd missed a turning somewhere, but eventually we did arrive at The Spittal of Glenmuick car park.

We followed the path out of the car park passing some intrepid campers, heading for the visitor centre.

The scenery was spectacular and we were nowhere near the Loch yet.

It wasn't far to the visitor centre and we had a good look round, taking in the information on local wildlife and stories about the area.
We continued on past the the visitor centre towards the Loch, which was still hidden from view, following the river which was meandering across the valley floor ...
... where we were thrilled to see a herd of deer peacefully grazing ...
It wasn't long before we crested the ridge and caught our first view of the Loch and we decided that we would aim to walk to the bridge, which you can just about see in the centre of the picture ...
As we were following the path we suddenly spotted some movement up on the hill to our left and were absolutely thrilled to spot a lonesome stag grazing ...
As you can imagine we stood for a fair while watching him, just willing him to look our way and we were rewarded with a brief glimpse ...
We passed the footpath to Glen Clova ...

... but stuck with our easy path, still heading for the bridge, with the promise of a bit of blue sky overhead ...

We soon made it to the pretty wooden bridge ...

... which dad and I couldn't resist crossing so that we could get right to the edge of the Loch. 

It's so hard to describe how majestic it felt standing right by the side of the Loch, my pictures really don't do it justice. We could feel the wind whistling around the valley and were dwarfed by the mountains towering all around, it really felt as though we were part of the landscape. I did try and take a video, it's not brilliant, but here it is anyway ...

It was time to head back the way we had come so we turned our backs to the Loch and made our way back up to the main footpath ...

We couldn't resist a last look at the Loch as we crested the ridge ...
... to head back towards the visitor centre ...
We did get one more real treat though on our way back ...

... before we entered the last bit of woodland by the visitor centre ...

We were so glad we'd made the effort to visit and to walk to the Loch. Even though we are no longer fit or energetic enough to make the full circuit, it was definitely worth the visit. It is a truly beautiful spot 😊