Ten miles west of Aboyne is the neat and ordered town of BALLATER , attractively hemmed in by the river and fir-covered mountains. It was in Ballater that Queen Victoria first arrived in Deeside by train from Aberdeen back in 1848; she wouldn't allow a station to be built any closer to Balmoral, eight miles further west. Although the line has long been closed, the town's rather self-important royalism is much in evidence at the restored train station in the... [More]