Scotland
Aberdeenshire
Why were so many castles built in Aberdeenshire? Christine Lyle and her husband, Alisdair, visit 12 grand examples – some in ruins – to find out

We have an old map, a very old map that shows us all the old castles, fortified houses, forts and various strongholds throughout Scotland. One of the richest areas for these lies, surprisingly, in Aberdeenshire. It's an area of Scotland that can easily be overlooked as a place to visit. It's more inhabited than the west coast but the rolling countryside is still very beautiful.
With such a concentration of castles in one area, it would be easy to explore a number of them in one trip. We had just four days, so in order to get round all that we wanted to see, we plotted our route each day with great detail. Many of the buildings we knew were just ruins, while others would be great structures. Some would not be true castles – just fortified houses – and many would not have seen any battle action at all, while others would have fought for their existence.
We found that one of our chosen piles had a caravan park very close by. This was perfect. Huntly Castle Caravan Park is a Caravan Club affiliated site and is beautiful. It lies in 15 acres of landscaped grounds but is just five minutes' walk from the town centre. It made the ideal base for the area we wanted to explore. The site is also a good place to pitch if you want to follow the Malt Whisky Trail. Half of Scotland's distilleries are in this north-east corner.
Huntly town is lovely and typical of the area; most of the buildings are built of granite. There's plenty to do and see in the town centre: along with the shops, restaurants and cafés there is the Brander Museum where you can catch up on local history. We discovered the most amazing hardware store in the town square where we found some quirky household items. Just north of the town was our start point – Huntly Castle itself.
So, having got the caravan parked and everything connected up and running, off we went to explore.
(Extract from the full article in the May 08 issue)

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ALSO IN THE MAG: West Dorset, Aberdeenshire, Holland, Brittany

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