Culsh – An Iron Age Earth House and Lunch at Douneside
A few hours.
The route
Culsh Earth House is a stone passage some 2,000 years old, hidden under a grassy bank by the road east of Tarland, and it can still be explored right to the end.
A short drive away, Douneside House, once the MacRobert family's home and now a country house hotel run by their charitable trust, serves a lunch in a conservatory with garden views at weekends.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
Book lunch at Douneside House through its website or by phone: there are no tables without a booking, and the restaurant is often booked up weeks ahead.
The day
Cromar
A weekend day in the Howe of Cromar, starting underground in the Iron Age and finishing over a long lunch, with the gardens to walk round afterwards.
Culsh Earth House
Culsh Earth House lies beside the B9119, in a low grassy bank by Culsh farm. There's no car park: leave the car on the roadside grass, out of the way of the farm road. Stone steps lead down to the entrance, and the slab-roofed passage curves for about 14 metres to a slightly wider chamber. The roof is low, so you go bent double, on hands and knees in places, and daylight soon goes: bring a torch. Iron Age farmers built it, probably as a cool store for their grain.
About 5 min by car
Douneside House
Lunch
Douneside House stands on its own drive near Tarland. Lunch is in the Conservatory: soup, sandwiches and a few mains on Saturdays, and on Sundays two or three courses with a roast of the day, Yorkshire puddings and vegetables from the house's walled kitchen garden. Children are welcome, whatever their age. Afterwards, walk round the gardens laid out by Lady MacRobert, from the terraces beside the conservatory to the wide lawn that looks out to the hills.
If it rains
The passage is dry inside, though the steps and the grass round it are wet after rain; lunch is under the conservatory's roof, and the gardens are best kept for a drier day.
Tarland Tearooms, a café in Tarland.
Photograph by Martin Richardson via Google