Balmoral Castle and the Dee

In 1848, Queen Victoria went house-hunting for a little holiday home in the Highlands. At Balmoral she found 'a pretty little castle in the old Scottish style', in surroundings which reminded her husband Prince Albert of his home country in Thuringerwald. The old castle was promptly knocked down, and rebuilt in the proper Scottish style with plenty of pepperpot turrets. The place is still loved by her descendants today. The present Queen's mother was photographed fishing the Dee in disreputable tweeds, and this is the setting for Prince Charles’ children’s book The Old Man of Lochnagar (1980).

Dogs and princesses

Queen Victoria raised cairns and monuments on every occasion. After the statue of her favourite collie dog, you pass a stone cross for Princess Alice. The Queen's third child, she married a very minor German prince during the mourning period after the death of Prince Albert: 'more of a funeral than a wedding', according to the Queen. She was an independent-minded woman who didn't get on with her mother, supported women's causes, and set up hospitals during the Austro-Prussian War. She died of diphtheria after nursing her own family through the illness, aged only 35.

Albert memorial

The largest momument of all was raised ‘to the beloved memory of Albert the great and good; prince consort. Erected by his broken-hearted widow’. Victoria and six of her children placed stones bearing their initials in its base. It has wide views in many directions, though not to the castle itself, which is concealed by trees.

Queen Victoria raised ugly stonework even on supposedly joyous occasions, and the next cairn, massive and conical, celebrates the marriage of her youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, to Prince Henry of Battenberg. In fact the Queen had been set against this marriage, intending Beatrice as the companion of her own old age. In the event Prince Henry died of malaria after only 10 years, and Beatrice returned to her mother's side.

John Brown

In Crathie Kirkyard is the grave of Queen Victoria’s special friend after the death of Prince Albert, the ghillie John Brown. Interest in Brown has been increased by the film Mrs Brown starring Billy Connolly and Judi Dench. Brown’s grave was inscribed by his Queen ‘that friend on whose fidelity you count, that friend given you by circumstances beyond your control, was God’s own gift.’

The Queen's family disapproved of her relationship with this common servant. After her death, her statue of him was banished to a corner of the woodland – you'll find it on the Blue Trail walk.

Cross the River Dee to the gateway into Balmoral Castle. You pay to enter the grounds and can pick up a map of the marked walks. Shortly, turn right off the driveway on a track that soon runs alongside the river. A path continues along the riverbank. Just after a power pole with warning triangles, take a path on the left. The cafe is over on your left as you reach a red pillar box at the castle.

Turn right alongside the castle, and right again across its end, with a sunken rose garden on your left. Go down steps and take a track to the left, which passes the memorials to dogs. With a stone cross (Princess Alice memorial) ahead, turn right and then left on an earth path through a pinewood to regain the riverside. Turn left on the riverside path. The tall white flowers of angelica grow here, as do lupins, whose seeds are carried here by the river. 

The path runs up to a tarred driveway, which you follow for 55yds (50m) to a path rising on the left. At another driveway just above, turn briefly right, then left up a grassy track. It rises through the woods to a junction with a map showing the estate paths. Keep ahead up a track that steepens and bends to the left under larches. At its highest point it reaches a T-junction.

Turn right, with a fine view ahead into the corrie of Lochnagar. The little-used track runs down to an unsurfaced forest road, where you turn left, with a deer fence on the right. After a gate through the deer fence, turn right at a triangle junction, up a new forest road. With the forest edge visible ahead, a wide path turns up left. Once at the hill top it leads to Prince Albert's huge pyramidal cairn. 

The path continues on the right, descending quite steeply to a corner with a view down the Dee. The path passes Princess Beatrice's Cairn as it descends to a tarred estate road. Turn right, down the road. (You could then turn left to revisit the castle, as the route is about to leave the estate.)

At the tiny settlement of Easter Balmoral turn right across a stream and down left to a road alongside the Dee. Turn right, then left onto a white suspension bridge across the river. Follow the road ahead, until a side road on the left leads past Crathie cemetery. (John Brown's grave lies midway between the ruined chapel and the south wall of the kirkyard.) After the newer graveyard turn left, for a riverside path back to the car park.