Tàrmachan Cafe

Venison sausage rolls from the Balmoral estate, perfect sourdough cheese sarnies and artisan coffee worth travelling for are the specialities at this stylish hideaway amid spindly silver birches in a former Aberdeenshire quarry, now reclaimed by native woodland and wildlife.

In a former Highlands quarry populated by silver birches, rowan and alder that swell and ripple in the wind shelters a rectangular, black-stained wood building with the word CAFÉ spelt out on its frontage. The woodland scatters light across its planes and it responds in turn with the drifting aroma of roasting coffee. This is Tàrmachan, from the Gaelic for ptarmigan, and it’s as entwined with its surroundings, just off the A93 across the Dee from Balmoral Castle, as it looks.