All across the Highlands you’ll come across country estates with, typically, a big stately home, a steading (old stable block), scattered cottages and grounds that can stretch for miles – somewhere to pursue all that hunting, shooting and fishing with which the Anglo-Scots landed gentry maintained their standing in days gone by. Some families have sold up, no longer able to make the rambling acres pay. Some have persevered, with a finger in every available pie in an effort to preserve the estate for future generations. My old school, for example, is now a popular restaurant with an adjacent shop selling produce from the Rothiemurchus estate (in the room where I once sat in primary one with our teacher Miss MacPherson) .
There are estates that have become destinations in their own right. Just outside Grantown-on-Spey is the Revack estate, where trails wind around a small hill with views across to the Cairngorm mountains. After a walk you can warm up with homemade soup in the cafe and shop for pricey Highland goods in the shop.
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| Revack trail |
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Walking on Revack Estate
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A particular favourite of mine is Logie Steading, on the Findhorn river about 20 miles north of Grantown and a great place to meet Elgin cousins, or a stop-off en route to the Moray coast. The estate comprises a house and grounds – including a walled vegetable garden – and dates back to the 18th century, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that a new generation of the family took over and began to rationalise and modernise.
For the tourist, there are scenic walks along the steep gorges of the river to a historic beauty spot, Randolph’s Leap, and the Steading itself, a conversion that houses a heritage centre and cafe, various shops and one of the best secondhand booksellers this side of Edinburgh. The area is well-served for distilleries, too, so it’s a useful spot to walk, or shop, off a whisky tasting…
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The Logie laird’s house
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| A Logie Redwood |
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| Money plants in the walled garden |
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