There is an area in northeast Scotland that is packed full of castles!! Just in Aberdeenshire, there are over 300 castles and manor homes dotting the landscape. Some are in ruins, but many are still lived in to this day. The problem is deciding which ones to visit!!!
We started our day at Tigh Na Geald B&B in Aboyne and headed straight to Dunnottar Castle ruins!!! Simply Spectacular!!! Perched 160 feet above the North Sea, this impregnable fortress is now an impressive castle ruin is not to be missed on your trip to Scotland.
When we visited in 2012, we spent at least an hour wandering around the ruins taking pictures. There is a car park off the side of the road and then about a ½ mile walk down into a ravine and then a steep climb back up several hundred steps to the entrance to the castle. So, don’t forget the extra batteries to your camera in the car, like my sister did, or you are in for a double workout.
Make sure to head over to the trail leading to the other side of the ravine for fabulous panoramic pictures of the castle. We also made it down to the beachside for a quick walk and some more beautiful pictures.
Next we headed to Balmoral Castle to feel a bit royal for the day. Balmoral Castle serves as the Queen of England’s summer home for over a 150 years. Many of the rooms of the castle are open to the public when the Queen is not in attendance. We toured the grounds, stables, and ballrooms of this enormous castle. There is a fabulous gift shop and a little café.
We stumbled upon The Tomnaverie Standing Stones on our way to Craigievar Castle. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I am obsessed with the book series Outlander; which is now also a hit show on Starz!!! Outlander is a time-travel romance series by Diana Gabaldon about a WWII nurse who ‘falls’ through time (via a circle of standing stones) and ends up in the 1700’s Scotland. Hence, on the way around Scotland we tried to stop at some of the hundreds of stone circles dotted throughout countryside. Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to fall through time ourselves…. On our next trip to Scotland in June we are stopping at many of the filming sights of the TV series.
We made a quick stop at Craigievar Castle on our way to Castle Fraser. Craigievar Castle was closed, but we were able to walk around the grounds and take photos. The tree lined path leading up to the pink castle is beautiful. Craigievar Castle has been thought to inspire Cinderella’s Castle by Walt Disney.
We had to visit Castle Fraser while we were in Scotland!!! In the Outlander book series, the lead male character is Jamie Fraser and much of the book series is about the Clan Fraser and the Clan Mackenzie. The castle and gardens are magnificent!!!
Then we had a bit of bad luck!! On the way to the Clava Cairns standing stones that the Outlander standing stones were based on, we BLEW a Tire!!! What a fiasco!!! It took almost 4 hours to get the tire changed because the tire had a special tire lug nut key that was hidden under the seats of the van we rented. We didn’t reach our B&B until almost 10:30 pm, so we ordered a pizza to be delivered there at the time we were arriving.
Our B&B hostess was fabulous at the North Wing Leachkin Lodge just outside Inverness. We had specifically rented this 2 bedroom/2 story “apartment” because it had a full kitchen, pull-out couch, and a washer and dryer!!! The dryer just happened to break in the weeks before we arrived, but the hostess was kind enough to dry all of our clothes in her extra dryers in her garage that she used to wash the bedding for the rental. So, we spent most of the night changing out loads of clothes in the washer so that we had something clean to wear for the rest of our trip!! We lit the fire in the fireplace and dried all of our undergarments on a rack overnight too!!
Stay tuned for my next blog post all about Eilean Donan Castle and the Isle of Skye!!!
