We are back in Aberdeen after a lovely few days staying in Braemar, my favourite village in Aberdeenshire. We stayed in self-catering accommodation in the centre of the village – Tigh Na Tri Cottage. I definitely recommend it. We had everything we needed and cooked most of our meals at home. There were also toys there which kept the kids entertained for hours. The wifi was excellent and it was warm, quiet, and peaceful.
Braemar has a lovely play park for children (and adults) which has great views of the surrounding hills. Ben took this video in the morning before our departure. There was a heavy frost and all of the equipment was coated in ice.
We stopped in Ballater on the way home to look at the recently opened Ballater Railway Station which burnt down in 2015. They’ve rebuilt it exactly as it was and it’s lovely. It’s not a working railway station now and instead contains a library, a tourist information centre, museum, and cafe. An original train carriage which was used by Queen Victoria is visible in the museum and was miraculously saved in the 2015 fire.
You can peer through the windows of the carriage.
The royal waiting room where Queen Victoria used to sit and wait for her train has also been rebuilt, complete with a Queen’s toilet.
This is the cafe where you can go for afternoon tea but it was shut on the day we went.
Instead we went for lunch at a new place called the Treehouse where the kids ordered a delicious-looking stack of pancakes.
The next photo is looking towards Ballater from the bridge over the River Dee.
rachel.blog 
Its a pity that Ballater is so far away from Middlesbrough! That station looks really nice.
You’ll have to come up to Scotland for a holiday!
Its ages since we’ve been to Scotland. We honeymooned there in Wemyss Bay on the west coast.
Are the pancakes vegan? Once my child leaves home for university I’m thinking of catering for vegan/vegeterian students and since I hardly eat meat or drink milk I’m thinking a lot around the practicalities of becoming vegan, at least for a while.
I don’t think the pancakes were vegan but I didn’t ask. I let the kids order whatever they want from the menu when we go out. I stick to vegan stuff but the kids don’t.
Catering for vegan/vegetarian students sounds wonderful! Do you mean
students at your school or university students?
The university ones. I’d like to be able to help out by offering the option. Also since I’ve discovered the Hisbe supermarket where you can take your own containers and fill them up with dried pulses, I could go back to making much less waste than I used to before I had kids with their meat eating ways
That is so great. It sounds like a wonderful idea.
We don’t have a Hisbe supermarket up here. The amount of plastic packaging in grocery shopping has got out of control. I sometimes wonder whether I could challenge myself to producing no rubbish for a month but I don’t think I could do it.
I’m really lucky living near Brighton, where there are lots of people interested in green living. You’d still have to be fairly organised but it’s prioritising what you think is important, which sadly is what many people don’t find important.