The victorian heritage trail

The valley of the River Dee has earned its title of Royal Deeside through more than a century and a half's connection with the British Royal Family. The focus of this association is Balmoral Castle, built as a holiday home and retreat by Prince Albert. From here, Queen Victoria and her family set out on many expeditions all around the area - over the Cairn o' Mount to Fettercairn, along the River Don or high into the Cairngorms. Some of these expeditions are recalled in the route of today's Victorian Heritage Trail. The Trail takes visitors by way of castles, distilleries and glorious viewpoints, and also through the main communities of the areas, with their own royal connections.

Royal Deeside and the Royal Connection

Balmoral

By 1847, Queen Victoria's love for Scotland had already meant a regular pattern of summer excursions northwards. In that year, the Queen's doctor told them his son had enjoyed a particularly fine spell of autumn weather while recuperating from illness on Deeside. Prince Albert called for a weather report, which confirmed it was drier than many parts of the west. Next year, they acquired a lease for the Balmoral estate, visited for the first time and were enchanted. The area all around, with its rushing river, red-branched Scots pines, wild moors and high hills, had a sense of tranquillity which appealed to the young Queen. She aptly described it in her diary: 'All seemed to breathe freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and all its sad turmoils.'

By 1852 Prince Albert had bought the Balmoral estate. The foundation stone for a new castle, the one seen by visitors today, was laid in 1853. The new Balmoral was completed in 1855 to a design by William Smith, City Architect of Aberdeen, working in close consultation with Prince Albert.

The house quickly won a special place in the family's affections. The Queen confided in her diary: 'Every year I seem to become fonder of this dear place, still more so, now that great and excellent taste has been stamped everywhere.' The subsequent annual visits, until the death of her husband in 1861, were probably the happiest ever for Queen Victoria. There were sorties to places of interest round about, expeditions into the forests and even on to the high tops of the Cairngorms. The men pursued their stalking and shooting with enthusiasm. There were balls, ceilidhs and entertainments - in fact much the same range of activities available to all who visit Deeside today.

Crathie Kirk

After the death of Albert, beloved Balmoral became a place of solace for the heartbroken Queen in the years which followed. As time passed, the collection of monuments on prominent places, which have become so much a part of the landscape around the Royal Deeside of today, increased. So powerful was the special magic of the area that Queen Victoria, in the latter decades of the 19th century, spent as much as one third of the year at Balmoral - a fact which did not please all of Her Majesty's ministers!

The Victorian Heritage Trail includes Balmoral of course; Crathie Church, which the Royals attend when in residence; Fasque House (former home of the Gladstones); Drum Castle; beauty spots and Victorian bridges, the Royal Lochnagar distillery; and the Old Royal Station in Ballater, built in 1866, restored to its original standard, and reopened, in 2001.

Discover the Scottish home of fine dining - The Milton restaurant, just 15 minutes from Aberdeen in the heart of Royal Deeside adjacent to Crathes Castle. The Milton, open all day, provides a central and extremely tempting dining location for your visit to Royal Deeside.

For more information on Royal Deeside and the Victorian Heritage Trail contact the Aberdeen and Grampian Tourist Board on
Tel 01224 288828.

Further visitor information is available on the Visit Banchory website.