Chapelton

Chapelton is one of a small collection of holiday cottages on Glenkindie Estate, a working Donside estate on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park where farming runs alongside protected woodland. There's real history here. Glenkindie Castle was pulled down in 1644 by a gathering of Covenanter lairds, and the present Glenkindie House, still the owner's private home, dates in part to 1595. Guests are free to roam the wider estate during their stay, and salmon and trout fishing can be arranged on its own stretch of the River Don.

The cottage sleeps six across three bedrooms: two kings upstairs and a flexible downstairs room where two singles zip together into a super-king. An open-plan kitchen and dining area handles the cooking and the long dinners, and the living room is the reason you'll stay in more evenings than planned, with a deep sofa beside the wood-burning stove, a vintage-style record player, and floor-to-ceiling windows with sliding doors opening onto private decking and a run of hills beyond. It's a genuinely quiet corner of Aberdeenshire, near a working farm, so the odd tractor passing counts as traffic.

The estate sits well for exploring both Donside and Royal Deeside, with the ruins of Kildrummy Castle a few miles down the glen and the Lecht ski centre up the road. Chapelton's neighbours on the estate include Dalgrassick, Greenstyle, Home Farm and Tornahatnach, several of which welcome dogs; Chapelton itself is kept dog-free.