Ballater

Why base here

Ballater grew up late. Wikipedia dates the village to around 1770, when it was laid out to lodge visitors to the Pannanich mineral well across the Dee, and the railway that reached it in 1866 stopped here for good: Walkhighlands records that the extension to Braemar was abandoned because Queen Victoria objected to a line running close to Balmoral. The Cairngorms National Park Authority describes a Victorian village at 213m on the east side of the Cairngorm Mountains, entered from the south over the four stone arches of the Dee bridge. That bridge is the fourth on the site. Floods took the stone crossings of 1783 and 1809, the second of them Thomas Telford’s, and Queen Victoria opened the present one in 1885, Wikipedia says.

The reason to sleep here is Lochnagar. Its standard route starts at the Spittal of Glenmuick, at the end of the public road up Glen Muick, which is about 9 miles from Ballater by road; from Braemar the same car park is 24 to 25 miles round by Ballater. Walkhighlands links its Lochnagar and Loch Muick routes to accommodation in Ballater, and for a week built round that one mountain it is the right call. Braemar stays the better base for the high Cairngorms to the west.

On foot versus by car

Craigendarroch starts at the door. Walkhighlands begins it at the car park in front of the restored railway station and gives 4.5km and 250m of ascent in one and a half to two hours: steep zigzags through an oakwood that was coppiced for cartwheels until the 18th century, then a summit that looks straight into Lochnagar’s northern corrie. The path is very steep at times and runs above the drops of the Pass of Ballater. The River Dee and Cambus o’ May circuit leaves from the same car park, 12.75km and 120m of ascent on waymarked paths, out through the woods on the south bank to a suspension footbridge built in 1905 and reopened in 2021 after Storm Frank damaged it, then back along the old railway, now the Deeside Way, which Walkhighlands warns is very popular with cyclists.

Glen Muick needs a car. The road up the glen ends at two large car parks, which Walkhighlands records as charged, and it lists no public transport to either the Lochnagar circuit, 19km and 930m of ascent in six to seven hours, or the Loch Muick circuit, 12.5km and 170m on good track round a loch on the Balmoral Estate, past the Glas-allt Shiel lodge Queen Victoria built after Prince Albert’s death. Morven, the Corbett above Logie Coldstone, is about 11 miles away by road and is written up on the Aboyne page, with Glen Tanar and the northern route up Mount Keen.

Practicalities

There is no railway. The Deeside line closed in 1966, and the station, which held Queen Victoria’s waiting room, was almost destroyed by fire in 2015 and rebuilt by the autumn of 2018, according to Wikipedia. The nearest trains are at Aberdeen, about 42 miles away by road. Stagecoach route 201 runs from Union Square in Aberdeen up Deeside through Banchory and Ballater to Braemar. The park authority lists four community paths starting from Station Square, beside the station car park, and Wikipedia puts Balmoral 7 miles west.

With children

The old railway is the flat option. Walkhighlands describes the Deeside Way into Ballater as almost flat, on a good waymarked path shared with cyclists, and on its last stretch into the village a short detour reaches the ruined church at Tullich, where carved Pictish and medieval stones stand at the far end of the graveyard. Craigendarroch is only 4.5km, but the zigzags are steep and the path passes above steep drops on the Pass of Ballater side, so a child who will not keep to the path is better on the railway. Loch Muick is the long level day: 12.5km with 170m of climbing, small wooden bridges, and sandy beaches at the head of the loch that Walkhighlands names as stopping places.