We set out bright and early(ish) from Aberdeen to the little town of Banchory and Crathes Castle--historic home of the Burnetts of Leys. My family has a probable tie to the generation of Burnetts who built Crathes--a younger son of the 11th Laird is (probably) an ancestor of mine--which brought an extra element of excitement to me to visit the castle.
Crathes is famous for it's beautifully painted ceilings. Some rooms have the original, not retouched, other rooms have been maintained and are just as vibrant today as they were in the days of Mary Queen of Scots. There used to be wall murals as well, but there is only a little evidence left of them in a few rooms.
Even you non-Burnetts would have a good time visiting Crathes. Not only is the castle quite beautiful, there is a fantastic walled garden.
With the sun shining, George and Arthur declared that they were hot (it was like 60F) and found a sprinkler watering flowers to get a little wet in.
The giant, decorative yew bushes are hundreds of years old and currently look like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
There were also these kind of hilarious little fountains. This one is a little boy with a turtle on his back, spitting water, and the little boy is seemingly peeing.
This little cherub is, inexplicably, holding an alligator. I couldn't say why, but I think it's tremendously goofy.
After a beautiful morning and a picnic lunch we walked a little ways along the path to the very fun playground. Honestly, a cool enough playground that Lee and I couldn't just sit and watch; we had to explore and go down a slide or two ourselves.
As we said good-bye to Crathes, we headed to a different type of castle a few miles to the north. Another single track road through the country side connected us to Tolquhon Castle.
This ruined castle was primarily built in the 1580s in seemingly the most pleasant and charming countryside to be found. For most of our visit we had to whole castle to ourselves.
In the little cottage at the entrance they had some "explorer bags" for kids to borrow and bring with them as they visit the castle. Each bag contains: 1 jester hat, 2 hand puppets, 1 flashlight, 1 set of binoculars, and 2 wooden dowels. We made excellent use of all of those things.
2/3 kids managed to totally turf it on the uneven cobbles of this castle, but they survived needing no band aids. And they didn't let their ouchies prevent them from having fun.
Maybe it was the emptiness, maybe it was the light, I can't say what exactly makes this castle so uniquely beautiful. I can say that being there alone made it feel like we had made some archeological discovery.
I did mention that we put the hand puppets to good use. Paul invented a puppet show and got his brothers to play roles. Don't you worry, we recorded this impressive production so you don't have to miss out.
As we returned our little explorer bags, we tried out some chainmail and other accessories they had at the entrance. Paul was pretty excited with the medical surgical tool. Seeing a bone saw made me think of Macho Man Randy Savage and made me wonder whether "BONESAW is ReEEEaDYYY" or not.
We made it back to our digs for a home(ish) cooked dinner, and the kids were literally bouncing off the walls with too much energy for the apartment to contain. So we decided to have an evening out at the beach in Aberdeen.
The beach here is quite a long stretch of sand, so we opted to specifically park near the lighthouse at one end of the beach because there is a playground there. Paul declared the playground equipment too damp, but Arthur had fun with it.
The kids enjoyed flitting around the beach, dodging seaweed and looking for rocks and shells. The water is still the frigid North Atlantic, but at least the sand was soft!
As we headed back towards our car, we walked through the little community of old fisherman's cottages called Footdee or "Fittie". Here the residents cover their little stone houses and beach shacks with tchotchkes and flower pots. It's a very cute area to walk through, plus we met a friendly cat that loved being petted by children.
We said our final farewell to Aberdeen the next morning and prepared for a full day of exploration. We had about 3.5 hours of driving to do and a whole bunch of stops I hoped we'd have time and energy to do. Our first stop was the Bullers of Buchan coastal walk, about 45 minutes north of Aberdeen.
These are beautiful cliffs and sea arches where you can see thousands of sea birds nest, including puffins if you're lucky. The views are incredible, but so was the wind. The kids were not having it and we only did a small portion of the walk, which was fine. We still saw a lot of fantastic scenery.
The kids wanted to head back to the car. To be fair, it was seriously windy. They were pretty sure they were going to get blown away into the sea. But if they'd lasted just a couple more minutes, they might have been with me when I spotted this lil cutie:
Actually I found four different puffins.
The puffins were hard to spot among all the other black and white birds, I definitely needed the serious optical zoom of my camera or binoculars to know for sure what I was looking at.
We headed a mile down the road for our next stop and the kids were really determined not to be out in the wind. So we let them wait in the car while Lee and I walked to New Slains Castle to explore.
This ruined castle is completely abandoned and unmaintained, built right along the beautiful rugged cliffs. Apparently Brahms Stoker was staying in the nearby village and got inspiration for Count Dracula's castle from New Slains.
The cloudy skies and the dramatic cliffs certainly make one think of a gothic novel! This castle became a ruin because as it fell into disrepair, the roof was purposely removed to avoid it being taxed as a dwelling.
The cliffs here are as beautiful as at the Bullers of Buchan, but surprisingly almost no nesting birds.
We got back to the car to find that the kids had accidentally set off the car alarm and been listening to it go off for basically our entire exploration. Ah, well. We headed off to our next stop (1.25 hours) away in the town of Cullen. Cullen is a fairly quiet coastal town famous for Cullen Skink, a creamy potato, leak, and smoked haddock soup.
We stopped in the tiny Lily's Kitchen Cafe for their award winning Cullen Skink. By "we" I mean Lee and I got the soup. The boys all ordered hamburgers. We spent a few minutes after lunch stretching our legs and walking along the old viaduct.
After a brief walk through the misting rain of Cullen, we got back in the car to head further along the coast.
By the time we reached our next stop, we'd seen rain and wind on and off all day. But when we arrived in Elgin, the sun came out bright and clear. We stopped off at the ruined Cathedral for a quick stop, but actually there was a lot more to do than I'd thought and we stayed for nearly two hours till closing.
First off, I didn't realize that the bell towers were so intact that you can go inside them and climb to the top of one of them. Obviously, we made that our first priority.
We enjoyed the lovely views from the tippy top, climbing who knows how many hundreds of spiraling stairs.
Lee and I worked on the scavenger hunt-esque quiz that is definitely intended for the kids, but our kids were busy playing Ghosts in the Graveyard.
We found the tallest tomb/memorial in the cemetery.
And this beautiful Pictish standing stone:
And many, many headstones engraved with "Memento mori": Remember, you will die.
The employees here were rather extra engaging and happy to share information about the cathedral and help us complete our scavenger hunt quiz (there was one reaaaaally tricky one).
It was a stop that actually appealed to the whole family, which I did not expect.
By the time the kids had finally exhausted their enthusiasm for Ghosts the Graveyard it was closing time. We made our way back to the car to finish our drive to Inverness and our next hostel. This day was a fun collection of places that don't get quite so many visitors, but entering Inverness (with some accompanying bad traffic) brought us back to the real heart of the Scotland tourist trail. On we go!
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