Ballater

A few months ago, J and I went to Balmoral and Braemar.  We had been going on to Ballater as well that day, but it was getting too late so we said we would come back later.

So today we did.  This was our route – out over the Tay bridge, through Dundee and then up the Cairn O’Mount to Ballater.  Back along the A93 through Balmoral and Braemar down to Perth, the motorway, the A91 and home.  This is supposed to be the most scenic day drive on the East Coast.

The Cairn O’Mount road was another of General Wade’s works, an “Old Military Road” and went through some incredibly beautiful scenery particularly with all the leaves turning (1st day of October).

Ballater is a very pretty Highland village on the River Dee (which we crossed multiple times today).

We went to a charming little church with lovely modern stained glass amongst the more traditional images.

Then we went to the old station.  It had been nicely restored but it wasn’t as interesting as the old one which burned down some years ago.

This was the old Royal Waiting Room.

We had a very nice lunch of venison burgers.

Then we drove back along the A93 past Balmoral and Braemar.  At this point we had a minor crisis as I had planned to stop for petrol at the station in Braemar, but when we got there they had run out of petrol!  Luckily being an old hand at rural Scottish petrol stations (which do run out and are also prone to being closed when you really need them), I still had 80 miles left.  This would have got us home but we would have been running on fumes, so we decided to go into Blairgowrie to get some.  Of course the whole town centre was being dug up with diversion signs everywhere.  We managed to get into Tesco, only then to discover the pumps weren’t working properly.  It all got sorted eventually, but of all the difficult bits of the drive with the wild twisty Highland roads and the 17% inclines on the A93 – this was the only stressful part of the day.  I don’t know who designs Tesco’s car parks for them but I think the same person did Blairgowrie as Cupar because they are both shite.

Got home at 4:3opm to find that the house had been well guarded all day by the cats who were there to welcome us home.