I was born and bred here in Aberdeen, never left and I’m a typical Aberdonian who is always complaining, “there’s nothing to do in this city”, I know you all think the same, but boy are we wrong!
There is so much to experience in and around Aberdeen and you don’t need to be a kid to enjoy it. One of my favourite things to do, especially when the weather is nice is to go on a castle trail, we have so many amazing beautiful castles nearby that we always forget about.
The infamous New Slains Castle is thought to be the inspiration to Bram Stokers Dracula which he wrote whilst visiting the North East. I certainly remember my first trip here, think I was around 14 and a friend and I thought it would be a great idea to take a trip when visiting Cruden Bay. That was our first mistake, thinking two teenagers that are clueless with directions could make the journey on their own.
After traipsing across a million miles of fields, getting covered in nettle stings, did I mention we did this trek in skirts and open toe sandals, we finally came to a holt. Not only were we going in the completely wrong direction, we had now found ourselves at the edge of a cliff and the only way across was to either climb down or make the million-mile journey back to get around it. Did I mention how stupid we were at 14? No, well rather than facing defeat and heading back as it had already been around 4 hours we decided to make the journey down the cliff soon realising getting down one side was so much easier than getting back up the other. Long story short, I became really good at climbing that day.
After about 6/7 hours we finally made it, we found Slains Castle only to spend about 15 minutes there before realising we had a thousand missed calls and a search party out looking for us. Within about 10 minutes we were found and taken back, the whole 20-30-minute walk back to where we started. Not only were we heading home covered in nettle rashes, we were also both never allowed to live down the fact it took us around 7 hours to make a half hour journey.
A full day out to see one beautiful castle, what more could you want?