Places to Stay in Aberdeenshire for a Group

Some holidays are all about who you bring. It might be three generations round one long table, or old friends out walking all day and cooking together all evening. Royal Deeside is a lovely place for either, with the river, the forests and the hills close at hand, as long as you've found somewhere with room for everyone.

We've picked out the places that take a crowd. There's an old toll house and stables beside a bridge from 1680, with a wood-fired hot tub. In Ballater there's a Victorian hotel you can take over entirely. Up in Glengairn, a hunting lodge by the river has a sauna and a hot tub, and Queen Victoria once rode over to it from Balmoral. There are stone cottages in old Victorian steadings that you can book together, and a cottage at the end of a rough track where you can swim in the burn.