We’re back in Aberdeen after a brilliant mid-week break at Glen Dye. I’ve been sharing photos and writing about our experiences all week but I thought I’d give it a more thorough review now we’re home and I can reflect on the experience. Note, they are not paying me to write this although if they want to offer us another holiday gratis in the future I will happily write another review with lots of photos 😉
We stayed at the Gamekeeper’s Cottage at Glen Dye Cottages & Cabins. They only opened as a holiday destination in 2018 and I’ve been following them with interest ever since. Most of the properties are a bit pricey but then this year they opened the Gamekeeper’s Cottage which is cheaper because it doesn’t have a hot tub or Big Green Egg BBQ. We have our own hot tub at home so that’s not really of interest to us and as a vegan I’m not particularly excited by a BBQ. The Gamekeeper’s Cottage was perfect and so we booked it!
Glen Dye is a gorgeous 45-minute drive south-west of Aberdeen through beautiful countryside on the south side of the River Dee. It’s really just down the road from us which makes it all the more surprising we haven’t explored it fully until now.
The trees around Glen Dye are big, grand and stretch for some 15,000 acres of forest. The driveway to our cottage was one of the nicest entrances I’ve experienced on all the holidays we’ve taken and really set the tone for the rest of our trip with the narrow winding road dwarfed by magnificently grand trees on all sides. It was awe-inspiring.
The Gamekeeper’s Cottage is gorgeous: a 19th century stone building, with two bathrooms, which sleeps six in three bedrooms.
It was very comfortable and well-equipped with almost everything we needed in the kitchen apart from a cake tin. I baked a cake while we were there but struggled to find an oven dish for it. I ended up dividing the mixture in two and baking two cakes in a small enamel bowl I found in the cupboard; it worked!
There’s no TV but that’s ok. Most of the time you’ll want to explore anyway and there is wifi so you can use laptops and tablets. Indeed the wifi is essential as none of us had any cellphone reception there. The whole area is a bit of a black hole in that regard.
The house is perfectly positioned away from the main road and opposite the Water of Dye which is breathtakingly beautiful and provides a symphony of peaceful watery sounds which we could hear from our bedroom.
Pets are welcome at Glen Dye including Victoria who enjoyed her holiday too.
There are chickens on the estate with eggs available for free at the store. Although I do not consume eggs as a general principle I’m ok with eating eggs from hens I can see are well-treated and these ones looked very happy with a terrific run.
The kids were particularly happy to have eggs for breakfast each day as it’s not something we have at home. When I first went vegan more than 20 years ago I kept my own hens and ate their eggs. I would love to keep chickens again but it’s already too hard going away with the pets we have currently let alone finding someone to also care for chickens. Plus we have foxes in Aberdeen and I noticed the Glen Dye chickens are protected by an electric fence.
There are other essentials in the store such as bread and oat milk. You can access it 24 hours a day with a special key fob and purchase items yourself from a self-serve machine. It was very handy.
Next to the store is a library with a coffee machine and lots of interesting paraphernalia.
They also have a BYO pub, The Glen Dye Arms.
This is a delightful concept: There’s a bar, seating, log burner and record player but no staff or alcohol. You take your own drinks and snacks and enjoy the ambience.
Just opened this year is Gladstone’s which is a shop selling all sorts of beautifully crafted items like socks, jams, bags, jumpers, books, antique postcards… It is very expensive though is my only complaint. I very nearly bought a pair of woollen socks which cost £36 but they didn’t have my size so fortunately my wallet was spared. The art on the door shows Clachnaben.
Also recently opened is The Clubhouse where you can play pool, table tennis, vintage arcade games like Pac Man and Space Invaders or even book the whole space as a cinema.
You can also check out the caravan which has been superbly decorated by Gail Bryson.
One afternoon we tried the woodland sauna which was very nice. I’m not a hot climate person and don’t like the heat at all but there are two plunge pools for a cold dip and also a cold shower nearby so you can alternate between hot and cold. It was fun!
Traversing the Water of Dye is an historically significant – and beautiful – bridge, the Bridge of Dye. It was built in 1680 and is one of the oldest remaining bridges in the north-east of Scotland. It’s a single-arch stone bridge with ribs beneath the arch which you can see in this next photo.
This crossing point was of particular military significance with Macbeth likely fording the river at this spot in August 1057 on his way to the Battle of Lumphanan. The battle took place on August 15th, so he may have even crossed it on the same day, 969 years ago, that we stood here this week. Long before him, the crossing was used local Celtic tribes and Romans, while Edward I is thought to have traversed the river here during his 13th century Scottish campaign. Shortly after the arched bridge was built in 1680, it was used by the Jacobites. In the 1980s it was replaced by an absolutely hideous monstrosity which I highly doubt will still be here 500 years from now.
The Glen Dye estate was owned by the Gladstone family for about 180 years having been purchased by Sir Thomas Gladstone in the 1840s. They also owned the neighbouring Fasque Estate which was sold in 2010. In 2021, Charlie Gladstone (Sir John Gladstone’s great-great-great-grandson) sold off 6,300 hectares of Glen Dye (excluding the cottages & cabins) to Aviva and Par Equity for the purposes of peatland restoration and reforesting – basically carbon credits. It was previously used as a grouse moor.
I read Charlie Gladstone’s book, Real Wild Heaven, and in it he writes that grouse moors are not environmentally sustainable. They require the systematic killing of foxes, stoats, hen harriers, peregrines and other – now, fortunately protected – birds of prey as well as burning of heather, elimination of tick-spreading mammals just so one species – the grouse – can monopolise the landscape for a season of shooting by a small elite group of toffs. Thankfully it is no longer a grouse moor and hopefully the new institutional investors will do the right thing with it.
The estate includes Clachnaban, that iconic Aberdeenshire landmark with its granite outcropping at the peak. We hiked up Clachnaben on Tuesday and loved it.
But probably our favourite activity of all was the wild swimming in the Water of Dye. What could be better than a refreshing swim in a perfectly formed lap pool, deep enough that you don’t know how deep it is but with a convenient stone staircase leading you in and surrounded by forests with not another soul in sight.
Charlie and his wife Caroline who run the holiday cottages have commissioned signs around the place like the one framing Clachnaben – Wake up next to people who make you happy – I took so many photos of that one! There’s another one next to the Water of Dye that isn’t very accessible – the colour contrast is poor – but I couldn’t help photographing it nonetheless and I think it is very instagrammable. See how difficult it is to read? In my experience designers often choose form over function. It says, “Shall we just love each other?”. It is the work of the artist on_the_wing.
I did also love this written on the side of the Coach House because it is so very true.
Near the woodland sauna is an adventure trail which is a pleasant circuit through the woods with some interesting things to spot on the way like this rope net.
Or the Wayfinder Cairn which also has Gail Bryson’s fingerprints on it.
There were odd and unusual things to look at all over the place. I enjoyed this vintage poster of Aberdeen as “Scotland’s leading holiday resort”.
And this lemon poster.
And this clever entrance to the sawmill.
If you’re an artist looking for inspiration it’s everywhere at Glen Dye. But equally if you’re not particularly artistic and just want a relaxing holiday that will excite the senses and get you outdoors then Glen Dye has everything. I’m already planning our next trip.
My other posts from our trip with more photos:
Hiking Clachnaben and discovering Glen Dye
The best wild swimming spot, The Bridge of Dye, arcade games and a gorgeous caravan
Things to do in the area:
Dunnottar Castle – 30 minutes
Fettercairn Distillery – 17 minutes
Finzean Farm Shop – 13 minutes
Balmoral Castle – 47 minutes
Loch Muick – 1 hour 13 minutes
Crathes Castle – 22 minutes
Royal Lochnagar Distillery – 50 minutes
Linn of Dee & Linn of Quoich – 1 hour 15 minutes
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