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 😊

Beautiful Britain - 3 Castles in One Day, Aberdeenshire (Part 3)

Hi there everyone

Well, here we are at the third and final castles of our 3 Castles in One Day big day out.

We'd spent ages in the gardens at Crathes and Drum Castles and now it was time to hightail it to Craigievar.

It was quite late in the day and we were all pretty shattered but were all excited about seeing this last castle of the day.

The National Trust for Scotland website says ...

"If fairytales were real, all castles would look like Craigievar."

As we got closer we were all eagerly looking for the first glimpse of the castle. We were not disappointed ...

... It really did look like a castle from a fairytale. A dusky pink, nestled amongst every shade of green we could imagine.

We stopped for more glimpses through the trees on the driveway and were getting more excited by the minute ...
Again, we'd timed our visit when the castle was closed, but we were still able to explore the grounds and we followed the short footpath from the car park to the castle. eagerly awaiting the big reveal, which was never going to be anything but a sheer delight ...

From here it was simply a case of oohing and aahing at every angle - it just looked lovely from every direction ...

Apologies to anyone who was hoping to see anything other than photos of a pink castle, I just couldn't help myself ...

That was really all we had time for, though of course there's always time for a quick selfie ...
It was soon time for us to be on our way, we'd had a really long, but fabulous day, and we had an appointment with four fish suppers back in Ballater.

I still have a couple more posts to share from our trip to Scotland to share with you, but may have a look at something different next week, hope to see you back here 😉

Beautiful Britain - 3 Castles in One Day, Aberdeenshire (Part 1)

Hi there everyone

We are back in Scotland for this week's post, still catching up on telling you all about our holiday with mum and dad, back in June.

When we were last up this way back in 2015 it was May and we paid a visit to Crathes Castle. We really enjoyed our visit, but we were just a little too early to see the June border at its best, though it did look as though it would be pretty amazing a few weeks later on.

As we are all members of the National Trust, we had a day of castles on the cards, starting with a return visit for us to Crathes.

As we arrived we had a real treat as there had been some serious 'yarn bombing' occurring and we agreed that we would definitely be parking up on the way out to have a closer look.

We decided that, as the weather looked a bit iffy, we would head straight for the gardens whilst it was dry.

We started off in the walled garden and though it was a dull day we were not in any way disappointed by what we found. The garden was absolutely spectacular and I have to apologise now for what is going to be a serious photo overload. If you don't like plants and flowers you may want to look away, but if you love them as much as we do then grab a cuppa, put your feet up and enjoy ...

The June borders, in both directions were absolutely breathtaking, one of the gardeners confirmed that everything that should be in flower was, so we were seeing the borders at their very best, be it a dull day ...

 As a whole these borders jam packed full of absolutely beautiful and vibrantly coloured flowers ...
There was just so much to look at. We were particularly taken with the Irises and came away inspired to find some similar for our own garden back home ...

We also loved the white borders and we were all surprised to find so many plants that we'd never seen before, even mum, with her encyclopedic knowledge of plants didn't know what a fair few were ...

Whilst these borders were the highlight of the garden for me, there were still lots of really beautiful plants and flowers to be seen. We'd never seen blue poppies before and there were some gorgeous peonies and roses. There was inspiration everywhere ...

From the walled garden we made our way round the back of the castle and the croquet lawn to more gardens to the rear of the castle ... 

We then left mum and dad to have a quick wander around the castle, whilst we opted for a quick breather in the cafe, before we headed off for castle number two.

But we couldn't leave without a stop along the driveway to capture some shots of the yarn bombing which was pretty spectacular in itself ...

We are so glad that we made a return visit, it was totally worth it. I can't see it being our last visit either. I really want to see it at this time of year again, but with bright sunshine and blue skies.

I think I'll save the other two castles for my next post, you can only take so many photos of flowers 😊🌷🌸🌹🌺🌻🌼