The River Dee Tour and Aberdeen

The Royal Deeside tour took us back through the Cairngorms which we had driven through quickly on our late and long trip from Thurso to Dundee.  It is an area steeped in mist and pink heather and one which I kept thinking 'We need more time so I can get out and walk amongst the sheep and along the meandering streams'.  But we didn't have the time so except for a few photo stops we kept on going to get to the beginning of the Royal Deeside Tour.

Our first stop was Braemar where we donned our woolly hats, jackets and put up our umbrellas to walk the main street.  This is where the butchers sell bread and the gift shops sell hairy coos and where Robert Louis Stephenson was inspired to write Treasure Island.  In winter its a ski resort and has that chilly feeling about it even in summer with a stream tumbline across rocks and mist covered mountains over looking the village.  It is also the beginning of the 'royal tour' as our next stop was Balmoral - closed for the summer to tourists - but we walked up to the gate, looked in the gift shop, looked at the war memorial with swastikas on it (and an explanation to say that before Hitler this was a sign of peace - which we knew).  Balmoral was bought by Queen Victoria for 30,000 guineas in 1852 after its owner choked to death on a fishbone - not sure if he had rellies to leave it to or not - but she and Albert rebuilt it in the Scottish Baronial style.  We didn't see much (well nothing really not even a chimney) as it is surrounded by trees and of course the occasional guard and iron wrought gate but we did enjoy a walk along the river which had flowed past the royal home before it reached us.

Ballater was the place for us - the sun came out - the flowers looked great and we walked past a deli that sold lots of interesting things like sweet peppers stuffed with cheese (my favourite), mini sausages, bread and haggis chippies (which we passed on).  We wandered the streets where many of the shop fronts had royal warrants on them giving the trader permission to sell his wares (though interestingly enough the Chinese and Indian food places didn't have royal warrants). We came across, more by accident than design, the Old Royal Station and Railway Carriage.  It was opened in 1866 and a year later Queen Victoria made her first visit to the station on her way to Balmoral.  It was some 33 years later that she made her last.  So, we had  a peep at the museum, the royal waiting room and loo, and the carriage they travelled on - apparently every time the Queen wanted to move between carriages the train had to stop.  Anyway here's a quote that goes to show  that perhaps the royal life isn't all we poorer folk thing...
"My life as a happy one is ended! the World is gone for me!...But oh to be cut off in the prime of life to see our pure happy, quiet domestic life, which alone enabled me to bear my much disliked position, cut off at forty-two - when I had hoped with such instinctive certainty that God would never part us, and would let us grow old together...is too awful, too cruel". This is what Victoria wrote in a letter to her uncle King Leopold in Belgium after the death of Albert who died in 1861 from typhoid.

Our next stop was Banchory - a little village famous for its river where salmon swim up against the flow as they do when migrating.  So, we parked the car went for another walk to another bridge and watched little salmon attempt to leap up the waterfall.  There was quite a crowd there (hate to say it mostly middle aged) and every time a salmon leapt there was a groan from the bridge as they all failed to reach the top - alas we saw this many times - but they always fell back into the deep pool to talk team tactics and nurse their grazed tummies.  We kept willing them to go a little bit further up because there were a number of shelves where they could rest on their upward travels - 5 little leaps is much easier than 1 big one - but they were stubborn and persistent and just kept on jumping and we kept on groaning.  We know they do all this physical stuff for reproduction purposes but really I wondered if they would have the energy to procreate afterwards - perhaps humans should take a lesson - a natural birth control method.

And then it was Aberdeen - a bit late in the day to explore much but a nice little city where we had a cup of tea in the old town, wandered round a historic church and Provost Skene's House (mayoral home built in the 17th century) before heading back to Dundee.