9 March: Ballater and a very closed Balmoral Castle

When mum left on 7 March, our Norwegian friends Unni and Eivind came over for a long weekend. After visiting Aberdeen and giving them a tour of Westhill, we decided to visit Ballater and Balmoral Castle on Saturday 9 March.

Ballater

Ballater is a 'Victorian' town, originally founded at the start of the 19th century to accommodate visitors to the nearby Pannanich Wells spa. It later became the site for the railway station that serviced nearby Balmoral Castle and Upper Deeside. For about 100 years this station was used by the Royal Family and their guests and by thousands of holiday makers coming to enjoy the beautiful surroundings. The town grew steadily during the Victorian era and contains many fine stone-built buildings.

The railway station, containing Queen Victoria's waiting room, is now a visitor centre with a replica of the royal carriage. The station also houses a café, where we had a lovely lunch. Sometimes the boys can take quite a while to finish their meals, and this time it was my youngest son who was taking his time. In the end, our friends and my oldest son went to see the royal carriage, while I waited for my youngest son to finish his lunch.

When the others had left, an elderly couple at the table next to ours asked us where we were from. It turned out they were locals and we had a nice, long chat about Ballater until my youngest son finally finished his lunch.

Balmoral Castle

From  Ballater it's just a 10 minute drive to Balmoral Castle, so after we had looked around the charming town of Ballater, we headed off for Balmoral. We chose the long and winding road through the woods, it was very picturesque. Close to Balmoral there was a beautiful stone bridge, which blended very nicely with the rather grey surroundings in March.

We knew in advance that Balmoral Castle  was not open to the public until 29 March, but as all the castles we had visited so far had nice gardens and grounds that were open all year, I expected the same to be true for Balmoral. I was so wrong!

It turned out there were high fences all around the estate and you couldn't see the castle nor the gardens. The closest we came to seeing the estate was admiring the beautiful gates.

To make up for this we took our friends to Crathes castle, so they at least could see the beautiful castle and the nice gardens there.