Aberdeenshire

The Buchan Coast – Seals, Slains Castle and the Bullers

A day by car, from Aberdeen and back.

The route

North of Aberdeen the coast runs to sand for miles, then rises into the red cliffs of Buchan, and this day out follows it from one to the other.

It starts at Newburgh, where at times hundreds of seals lie out on the sands across the mouth of the River Ythan, watched from the village side of the water. Over the river are the dunes of the Forvie reserve and the old fishing village of Collieston, tucked into a cove below the cliffs. Lunch is at Port Erroll, the harbour at the north end of Cruden Bay, where Bram Stoker spent his summers. Then a cliff path to the roofless ruin of Slains Castle, and the Bullers of Buchan, a sea cave whose roof fell in, with seabirds on its walls. Aberdeen is 40 minutes' drive home.

The day

Buchan

A day up the Buchan coast, from the seals on the sands at Newburgh to the cliffs north of Cruden Bay. The morning is for the Ythan, the Forvie reserve and Collieston's cove; after lunch by the harbour at Port Erroll, Slains Castle is a walk along the cliff and the Bullers of Buchan a short drive north. Leave Aberdeen at about nine.

1 hr 44 min at the wheelAbout 57 miles by carAbout 4 miles on foot

Newburgh Seal Beach
An attraction
It's 27 minutes' drive from Aberdeen, by the A90 past Balmedie, to Newburgh. Turn at the Newburgh Inn down Beach Road to the car park at its end, then walk about 10 minutes on a boardwalk to the seal viewing platform. The seals lie across the river on the Forvie sands, at times hundreds of them, most hauled out around low tide and just after, so check the tide before you set off. Watch from this side only, and keep dogs on a lead.
More about Newburgh Seal Beach
12 min by car
Forvie National Nature Reserve
A walk
The Forvie Centre is 12 minutes' drive north: over the Ythan on the A975, then right at the Collieston crossroads. The reserve's thousand hectares of dunes, heath and shore hold the largest mainland colony of terns and gulls in Scotland. The Sand Loch Trail runs a mile there and back from the centre. Forvie Kirk's ruins, and a village said to have been buried by sand in a nine-day storm, lie on the Dune Trail from the Waterside car park, partly fenced off from April to August.
More about Forvie National Nature Reserve
3 min by car
Collieston
Drive 3 minutes to the viewpoint car park at St Catherine's Dub, just north of Collieston, then walk 5 minutes down to the harbour. A fishing village since at least the 16th century, Collieston has the first safe harbour in fifteen miles of beach and dune north of Aberdeen, its cottages climbing the slopes above a sandy beach. Caves in the cliffs made this a smugglers' coast in the 18th century, and the story goes that a Spanish ship, the Santa Caterina, sank off the Dub in 1594.
About 16 min by car
Harbour Dunes Café
A café
Carry on 16 minutes north on the A975 to Cruden Bay, then down Harbour Street to Port Erroll, the fishing village the 18th Earl of Erroll founded in the 1840s. Harbour Dunes Café opened beside its little harbour in September 2024, and its windows look out over the dunes and the long curve of the bay. It does breakfast until 11 and lunch after, and dogs are welcome. Park well back from the harbour edge and clear of the piers and containers, which are kept for the boats.
More about Harbour Dunes Café
16 min on foot
New Slains Castle
An attraction
Leave the car at Port Erroll and walk 16 minutes from the café, up from the harbour and east along the cliff top, to Slains. Slains was the house of the Hays, Earls of Erroll, rebuilt in the Scots Baronial style in 1836 and 1837 and unroofed in 1925. Bram Stoker spent summers in Cruden Bay from 1892, and the castle is said to have given Dracula its octagonal room. Its front stands on the cliff edge, unfenced: keep back, and off the walls. Walk back the same way.
More about New Slains Castle
16 min on foot back to the car, then 5 min by car
Bullers of Buchan
An attraction
Back at the car in Port Erroll, it's 5 minutes' drive north to the car park by the cottages at the Bullers of Buchan. A short walk past the cottages, the ground drops into the Pot, a sea cave 30 metres deep whose roof fell in. The rim path is narrow and unfenced. Kittiwakes, fulmars and guillemots nest here, and from April to early August there are puffins on the Camel's Hump, just south, reached by a rough path close to an unfenced edge. Aberdeen is 40 minutes' drive home by Ellon.
More about Bullers of Buchan

If it rains

The seals lie out on the Forvie sands in rain as in sun, and a coat and binoculars are all they need; the Forvie Centre's displays are indoors. In a gale, leave out the Slains cliff and the rim of the Bullers, which are unfenced and exposed. Haar, the cold sea fog that rolls in off the North Sea, can hide the seals and the cliffs altogether. For a roof in the afternoon, Aberdeen Maritime Museum on Shiprow is about 50 minutes' drive from Port Erroll: free, open until 5pm (4pm on Sundays), with the city's story of fishing, shipbuilding and North Sea oil over four floors.

Worth a detour

Old Slains Castle
From the viewpoint car park at St Catherine's Dub, just north of Collieston, a rough cliff path runs north to the scant remains of Old Slains, the Hays' castle before New Slains, blown up with gunpowder on James VI's orders in 1594. The round walk, back by a farm track and the road, is 4.5 km and adds an hour and a half to two hours to the morning, so lunch at Port Erroll comes after two: take a picnic, or keep the walk for another day. It is not the Slains of the afternoon, near Cruden Bay.
Buchan Ness Lighthouse
7 minutes' drive north on the A975 into Boddam: park by the harbour and walk over the short causeway to Buchan Ness and its lighthouse, white with a red band, first lit in 1827 to Robert Stevenson's design. It is a working light, not open to visit. Aberdeen is 50 minutes' drive home from there.