Dog-friendly walk
Public car park at Crathie (AB35 5TL) – chargeable. Local bus services stop on A93 at Crathie Kirk.
View Full Route Description
Exit the car park onto B976. Turn left (South West) on B976 to cross the River Dee. After a short distance you will arrive at a bend in the road. Turn right to visit the Balmoral Ticket Office and gift shop. Return to B976 and turn right to continue along the road (South East). After 800 m turn right (South) onto a road signposted “Royal Lochnagar Distillery”. Keep right at the next fork and then at a 3-way junction take the road to the left (South). After passing several cottages, ignore a track to the left sign-posted “To Prince Albert’s Cairn” (you will come back down that way). Instead, continue ahead as the track goes through a gate and gently uphill through the forest. You will come to a crossroads 1 km along this track – turn left (South) to follow the track up a steeper hill. After 300 m, just before this path emerges out of the trees, look out for a narrower path on your left. This will lead you up to the summit of the hill Creag an Lurachain. Here you will find the pyramid-shaped Prince Albert’s Cairn. When you are ready to head back down, take the path heading South East from the pyramid. After a steep downhill section you will arrive at Princess Beatrice’s Cairn. From here the path continues downhill to pass through a gate and meet up with the road you walked along earlier. Turn right (East) onto the road and retrace your steps 400 m back to the B976 at the “Royal Lochnagar Distillery” signpost. Turn right (East) onto B976 and after 100 m cross the river via the suspension bridge. A pleasant footpath will lead you from here North onto the A93 opposite Crathie Kirk. Turn left (West) to walk along the roadside pavement. After 190 m at Crathie Visitor Centre, turn left into the car park.
WALK REPORT – 12TH AUGUST 2021
TikTok, of all places, is responsible for this walk happening! My husband saw the pyramid on TikTok and has wanted to visit it ever since. (I on the other hand, am so ancient that I had to google whether TikTok is written as two words or one word in order to write this paragraph….) The chance of a couple of days away anywhere in the country therefore took us to the edge of the Cairngorms, and on this particular day to Balmoral Estate. I had done my usual planning exercise of mapping out a route before we left home – one which took in quite a few of the cairns. Sadly when we got there we realised that the “Cairns Walk” was closed (we think due to the Royals being in residence at the time). Luckily we were still able to visit the pyramid – it would have been quite a drive from Ayrshire for nothing otherwise! As it turned out, the 4 mile loop we did do was really stunning and I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. [You can find out if the paths are open by visiting the Balmoral Castle website before you go]
Having recently completed my Lowland Leader training and now in a “consolidation period”, I was keen to practice some skills. I am not sure how my long suffering husband felt about the constant dialogue he was subjected to – “About 300m along here we should pass a track on the right and after a short, fairly steep uphill section we should see another, narrower path on the left which we want to take. If we come out of the trees we will have gone too far. Oh look, do you know what this tree is? Oh and look, wild blueberries! Did you know…….. .” He did well putting up with me. And it was lovely to walk somewhere completely unfamiliar to both of us.
The trails were generally very quiet so it came as a surprise (and a roll of the eyes) to reach the pyramid – at the highest point on the walk – to find that a few families had arrived there before us. Our chances of a taking a person-less photograph were looking slim! We hung around for a bit and did manage a few carefully-angled shots, creatively blocking out people with tree trunks and that sort of thing. The views from the top were quite something, and I loved seeing the hillsides covered in purple heather. The whole walk was rich in plant life actually – we were able to sample some wild raspberries, blueberries and admired (didn’t dare eat) many varieties of fungi.
The return route was equally as lovely, as well as being much shorter, not to mention downhill all the way. We did discuss the perhaps more sensible option of doing the route in a clockwise direction, meaning that the uphill section to the pyramid would be a lot shorter. Swings and roundabouts really, since it would also be steeper! And there is something I like about keeping the highlight until near the end. Speaking of highlights, how fab is this suspension bridge?!
There is a lot to love about this walk, and whether you are a fan of the Royal Family or not, you can’t help but agree that this is a beautiful part of the country in which to reside, temporarily or otherwise.
