Braemar hotels collection

Ballochbuie Forest is a remnant of the old Caledonian forest. The neighbouring Balmoral estate bought it to keep the loggers out, and its Scots pines, russet of bark, have grown old since without falling to the axe. Upstream, the granite houses of Braemar line either side of the Clunie Water, not far from a tower house girdled by a star-shaped wall. Further up still, at the Linn of Dee, the river squeezes through a cleft in the rock. Robert Louis Stevenson spent a wet summer here drawing the map of an island for his stepson; the novel came afterwards.