Excellent day for exploring

Scotland has a wealth of ancient place names originating from Gaelic mostly, but with some Norse names thrown in, reminders of the Viking raiders who regularly duffed us up until they were decisively defeated at the Battle of Largs in 1263. The north-east is the source of a great number of these intriguing names.

I was first aware of Glenbuchat, or Glenbucket – glen of the roe deer – more than 50 years ago when I got to know a Glenbuchat gamekeeper who came down from Donside to compete at clay pigeon shoots at Kinnaber Moor, outside Montrose. I lost contact with him and didn’t give the place another thought until the Doyenne and I started driving over Cairn o’ Mount and The Lecht to Grantown-on-Spey on our way to visit son Robert and his family when they moved to the Black Isle. A finger post to the forgotten glen in Bellabeg reminded me that all those years previously I’d wanted to explore the area.

So when a morning dawned bright and sunny, the Doyenne made a picnic, and we bundled Inka into the car and set off over the Cairn to Banchory. We headed past Lumphanan on the A980, past Craigievar Castle, which is quite our favourite on the Aberdeenshire castle trail, to Mossat of the legendary Mossat shop, which featured in some of Scotland The What’s sketches.

Now an antiques shop, in its heyday it was a country store serving a wide rural community. It was said anything and everything the farmers’ wives who shopped there could ever want was stocked by the Mossat shop. But it became a casualty of increased mobility with greater ownership of cars and the expansion of supermarkets and closed, I think, in the late 1970s.

The A97 carries on past Kildrummy Castle Hotel and Kildrummy Castle and Gardens. Like most Scottish castles, Kildrummy has a turbulent history, fought over because of its strategic position and with numerous changes of ownership. There’s a gruesome story attached to it. The castle was under one of its many sieges and the blacksmith betrayed the defenders by setting fire to it. He was rewarded by having the gold he was promised for his treachery poured molten down his throat.

I like to collect old churches and churchyards and when the Doyenne pointed out the bellcote capped with an urn, poking above the trees, I couldn’t resist turning up the short steep path to Kirkton of Glenbuchat Old Parish Church. Local tradition has it the church was built here after a number of parishioners drowned trying to cross the River Don to get to the church several miles south, in Logie. I would like to have seen inside the simple, unassuming building, typical of small, rural churches of its period. The interior has interesting and historical features, but it is obviously being restored, with scaffolding and dust sheets everywhere.

We found a spot to pull off the road where we could take Inka for a walk. We had our picnic looking across the glen over the Water of Buchat to Glenbuchat Castle, a clan Gordon stronghold built in 1590. Around us whaups and oyster catchers and peasies were calling. In the field behind us, ewes were whickering to their lambs. All was peace – which was what we had come for.

The last Gordon owner of Glenbuchat Castle was John Gordon, an ardent Jacobite known as Old Glenbucket, who took part in the 1689, 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Uprisings. After Culloden, he escaped to France and never returned to Scotland. There is a splendid, if somewhat scary, portrait of Old Glenbucket painted around 1740 showing a wild character with fierce eyes, long flowing hair down to his shoulders and Zapata-style moustache, in full Highland dress with elaborately laced doublet, tasselled sporran and holding his broadsword. Probably best not to have disagreed with him after an evening of dramming.

The road took us down to Bellabeg and familiar country, and we turned for home. The red Post Office telephone box at the junction to Heughhead was being spring cleaned and repaired and we stopped to speak to Phil and Gill Cook who live nearby at Old Semeil.

Time and again you realise how Scotland is just a big village and you can’t step outside the door without tripping over someone you’ve come across before. The Cooks had a herb garden where the Doyenne used to buy herbs on her journeys to and from the north. The telephone box no longer has its telephone – victim of the universality of mobile phones – and was sold to the community for the princely sum of £1. After a little research, I discovered that it is the K6 model with domed roof and Tudor king crown motif introduced in 1935. It has been on its site for as long as anyone can remember and is being restored as a community asset, its new use as yet undecided.

Time and again you realise Scotland is just a big village and you can’t step outside without tripping over someone you’ve come across before

Picture: Angus Whitson. The old telephone box at Heughhead being restored by Phil and Gill Cook.