Lovely River Dee
Willie Shand sets out through the Mar Estate to see some of the sights so beloved of the Royal Family.
ABOUT seven miles west of Braemar, the minor road that leads out by Mar Lodge and Inverey crosses the river at the spectacular Linn o’ Dee.
The fine pink granite bridge that spans the river in a single Gothic arch was officially opened by Queen Victoria in 1857.
The vast Mar Estate, covering over 70,000 acres of moorland, woodland, mountains and glens, is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland.
At one time the Mar Estate was just a small part of the vast Earldom of Mar which covered a huge swathe of the country across the valleys of the Rivers Dee and Don.
Just across the bridge, above the north side of the Dee, is a large woodland car park which makes a popular starting point for many of the area’s finest walks.
Walkers are spoiled for choice, and whether you’re looking for a long walk or a short walk, it’s easy to find something to suit.
Not everyone, after all, might feel up to the gruelling 29-mile trek by Glen Derry and Glen Avon through to Tomintoul, the 24-mile hike to Loch Morlich by the Lairig an Laoigh or the 20-mile long Lairig Ghru to Coylumbridge.
There is, of course, one other point you need to consider on any of these long-distance routes. Once you get there, your car is still at the Linn o’ Dee.
These old mountain passes would in times past have served well the drovers driving their cattle on the hoof south to the lowland trysts.
One of the Dee’s major tributaries is the Lui Water carrying the combined waters of the Derry and Luibeg Burns. It joins the Dee about half a mile east of the Linn.
I’d decided to start my day in Glen Lui following the marked track that sets off north from the rear of the car park. Like the Dee, and the Quoich further east, the Lui Water holds some fantastic waterfalls. You’ll hear the river long before you see it.
I’m in two minds whether
or not to take a coat. It’s the end of May and although pleasantly warm when the sun’s out, there’s still a right nip in the air when it disappears.
Following a boardwalk across a wetter bit, I cross the main Glen Lui track to join a narrower path and soon find myself down beside the roaring river.
Alongside tumbling falls a salmon ladder has been built to assist the fish in climbing the river and reaching their nursery waters.
It’s a wild place, but thankfully not as wild as it was during the recent terrible floods that devastated much of Deeside.
These floods have badly damaged and caused closure to parts of the riverside track and indeed, in places, the path has literally been swallowed by the river.
With numerous loops and twists the Lui flows south, every so often taking a sprint as if anxious to reach the Dee, spilling over lots of picturesque mini-falls along the way.
Further on, along the main Glen Lui track for Derry Lodge, the river is crossed by the Black Bridge. Unlike many modern-day place names, older names usually have a reason or story behind them.
Black Bridge is no exception, although maybe less than exciting. Apparently, it was given this name when at some point it was surfaced in tar.
Today, I’m not going as far as Black Bridge, but after rejoining the main track I turn south and accompany the river until reaching the single-track public road for Allanaquoich.
Across the road, three steps lead to another woodland track, this time running high above the Dee.
Deeside’s royal connections go back a long time before Queen Victoria decided to purchase the Balmoral Estate and a long time before her granddaughter Louise, Duchess of Fife, built Mar Lodge.
As early as the mid 1400s, Mar Estate was in royal hands and had become a favoured hunting forest.
I always enjoy wandering among mature native woods with the timeless beauty of the Scots pine. Of the old forests that once covered much of Scotland, not a lot remains.
Our appreciation of their worth came just a little late. Felled for housing, ship building, fuel or to make clearings for new farmland, many of the great forests of Deeside were to pass through the sawmills.
Deer stalking became big business, and protecting the welfare of the deer, so some would-be hunter could shoot them, was taken extremely seriously.
Over the past twenty-odd years, the National Trust for Scotland has been working hard to restore the balance of nature on the Mar Estate, reducing deer numbers, removing fencing and miles of unnecessary tracks as well as maintaining the popular hill paths. Sometimes, though, as we can see from the floods, Nature has her own ideas.
Our track above the Dee soon drops steeply to the riverbank below the Linn. If you’ve any doubt as to the power of this river, just take a look at the ravine she’s carved for herself through the solid rock below the Linn.
No sculptor could create a finer work than the river has at this point. The sign warning Caution Deep Gorge should be heeded. One or two visitors to the Linn o’ Dee have slipped into the raging waters and drowned.
It’s a spectacular sight even on a sunny day. In spate it can be terrifying. And, little wonder, too, as, below the bridge, the wide spreading river is forced to squeeze through a narrow gap just a few feet wide.
Climbing on to the bridge and looking over the parapet at the river bursting its way through the gap, it seems inconceivable that anyone would deliberately attempt to swim it.
But, in 1930, that’s just what the mountaineer John Menlove Edwards did when challenged to a dare.
At the south end of the bridge a rough track strikes west above the right bank of the Dee. You’re not likely to meet many people out this way and the track peters out after about a mile.
What farms and dwellings once lay out here have long since fallen to crumbling ruin. Where the track ends, and we take to making our own way over the rough grass, the Dalvorar Burn spills down from Carn Liath to end in an amazing little waterfall.
Just half a mile further brings me to the remains of Dalvorar Farm. On low ground, within a wide loop of the Dee, today it looks an idyllic setting, but you probably would have thought otherwise during last winter’s floods.
Nor, too, would you have stood here long during the even worse floods of 1829. In the Muckle Spate, as it became known, the river level rose so rapidly that the farmer, his wife and their seven children barely had time to run to higher ground.
Besides Dalvorar, there are the ruins of one or two other homesteads and enclosures. Their bare stone walls reveal nothing about the folks they once sheltered.
One, though, Dubrach, was the home of a rather famous Deeside character by the name of Peter Grant. He now resides in Braemar Cemetery with his tombstone recording his age as a hundred and ten.
Three hundred years ago, there weren’t that many folk saw such a ripe old age, and fewer still led a more colourful life than Auld Dubrach, as he was known.
Auld Dubrach was a staunch Jacobite supporter and was born here in 1714. He was a bit too young to join the 1715 Jacobite uprising, but he was quick to enlist when Bonnie Prince Charlie staged his rising in 1745.
Leaving his trade as a weaver and tailor, he went off to fight for the cause. His bravery saw him decorated after the Battle of Prestonpans and he no doubt fought with equal courage at Culloden.
However, Culloden didn’t work out too well for the Jacobites. Charlie scarpered and Peter, although fortunately a survivor, was one of those taken prisoner and incarcerated in Carlisle. His fate would undoubtedly have been either deportation or the rope.
However, he managed to escape Carlisle and, not without much difficulty, make his way home to Deeside where he settled down to his old trade and found himself a wife in Mary Cummings.
Some 74 years after Culloden, and while in his 105th year, two men from London just happened to be passing. Peter was soon relating tales to them of the ’45 and even gave them a demonstration in how to use the broadsword.
The men were so impressed with his stories that they petitioned the King to award Peter a pension. The King was so intrigued with what he’d heard of his old subject that on a royal visit to Edinburgh he arranged to meet him.
When King George introduced himself he greeted Peter as “his oldest friend”. Peter soon put him right though and informed him that he was in fact “the King’s auldest enemy”. Even at a hundred and five, he was quite prepared to “fecht Culloden ow’er again”.
The King clearly bore no grudge as he awarded him a pension of 50 guineas for life. At a hundred and five, the King no doubt didn’t expect it to be for long.
Dubrach, the last surviving Jacobite of the ’45, however, went on to enjoy drawing his pension for a good five years. n