A Day Out In Deeside

Willie Shand heads to Aberdeenshire to enjoy a scenic stroll around the village of Kincardine O'Neil.

Factfile

• For a long time, St Mary's Church was considered the finest church in Deeside. Only the foundations of its attached hospice remain.
• When King James V came this way in the 1520s, he travelled incognito, finding accommodation with a crofter by the name of Cochrane. Due to the kindness and hospitality he was shown, the King granted the crofter all the lands of Cochrane.
•  In the Highlands it was a traditional way of testing strength to carry heavy boulders. Attempting the Dinnie Stanes at Potarch might, for most of us mere mortals, prove a bit too ambitious.
• The ferry at Potarch used to be plagued by a mischievous water kelpie. After the bridge replaced the ferry, though, it disappeared into the depths and was never heard of again.

ABOVE a wide meander of the River Dee between Banchory and Aboyne, you'll find what can claim to be the oldest village in Deeside Kincardine O'Neil.

Folk have been settling here for thousands of years.

Finding its wide, traffic-friendly main street, you'd almost think the place had been designed to accommodate modern transport.

Actually, it wasn't. It was made this wide simply to give the horse-drawn stagecoaches room to turn.

The village's Gordon Arms Hotel was built as a staging inn where travellers could break their journey and change horses.

This was about as far as coaches could travel from Aberdeen without fresh horses.

It might be only 25 miles from Aberdeen to Kincardine O'Neil, but by the journey stagecoach could take as much as 11 hours.

How we take for granted our modern roads, bridges and cars.

There was a time when crossing the wide, fast-flowing Dee would have meant using one of the river's 36 fords.