Dunnottar Castle, sitting on the east coast of Scotland on a headland, is one of the most photographed castles in the UK; if you get a standard Scotland calendar, it’s as likely as not to contain one picture of this castle. And for good reason – the partially-ruined castle sits on its own rock surrounded by the sea, silhouetted against the sky and Aberdeenshire cliffs. Like Edinburgh, it is a castle through which one can see the passage of time, the periods of history in which it was used and built. The keep and entrance are thoroughly medieval, but the North, East and West ranges are all varying degrees of late medieval and modern.
Dunnottar is most easily accessed by car, but if you are trying a carbon-friendly tour of Scotland, you are still in luck. You can either walk up the seacoast from nearby Stonehaven, about 1.5 miles – though prepare for a few good climbs and wear sturdy shoes – or you can get a local bus to the end of the road, about half a mile. I am not sure how often these busses run, however, so definitely keep an eye on the schedules. My mother and I first visited more than ten years ago, though I cannot recall how we actually reached the castle as we were definitely without a car; I have a feeling we actually took a taxi from Stonehaven train station, so that may be another option.
Tickets for the castle are purchased once you make it inside the fortress, so in theory one could visit and walk along the coast to see the castle from a distance, but for free. The opening hours vary by time of year, but are up to date on the castle website, where you can also buy tickets in advance.
There is a good-sized car park with a porta-loo and a very good catering van that sells drinks, ice cream, chips and rolls with bacon, burgers, hot dogs, or haggis. There may have been a vegetarian option, but I am not positive.
The adjacent picnic benches are visited regularly by scores of sparrows living nearby, and they are quite tame, hopping right up to you for a few crumbs or a piece of roll.
From the car park, visitors start off down a wide path lined with thistle and wild roses, with the castle slowly rising on the horizon ahead.
One has an option to go left along the coast, right across a few small bridges to a viewpoint, or immediately to the castle. I recommend, to get warmed up, a jaunt along to the right first, where you will go down and up a few sets of stairs and path as to move along the cliff. This path is also lined with Scottish fireweed (purple flowers) and gorse, and there are several excellent places to pause for a picture.
The viewpoint itself allows for gorgeous pictures – as one would expect – of the rock on which the castle sits, the coast, and the sea. From here you can also get a good feel for the staircase awaiting you to access the castle.
Once you have had your fill of this particular view, you can continue along the coast quite a bit further, or you can head back down and up to the point you started, looking over the castle and bay. From here, you must descend what must be around 100 steps, zig-zagging down the steep hillside towards the beach. The stairs are wide enough for two to pass and have a solid railing, plus at least one bench at which one can take a breath. This route also offers some excellent views, though it’s hard to stop for long when there is a queue of people behind you waiting to get down, or up.
The bottom of the staircase offers again two options – you can scamper off left to explore the beach, or go straight ahead to the castle. Here one finds another set of stairs, though first you have a good view of the rock on which the castle is built, including a gated cave and the land bridge that once connected the castle to the coastline but was eroded for security.
Stairs take you in a postern gate type of entrance, and then up through the gatehouse to where you buy or show your tickets. From the ticket office, there is a well-marked route climbing up through the castle, past Benholm’s Lodging, a structure clinging to the edge of the rock. The top floor is a comfortable enough room, while the lower levels are all designed to aide in defence of the castle with numerous arrow loops.
Another short climb through a pends – covered passage that make you very pleased you are not storming the castle – and finally in front of you rises the medieval keep, strong and square and emblematic of high medieval Scottish construction. The keep was constructed in the 1390s by Sir William Keith, Great Marischal of Scotland, a hereditary post held by his family and one of great importance to the governing of the kingdom. Quite well preserved, the keep hosts a large kitchen hearth on the bottom floor and a rare straight stone staircase leading to the second floor. Here you can look out over the rest of the castle or the beaches beyond.
Once you have fully explored the keep, you will find countless other structures in various states of ruin from the storeroom and stables to the increasingly less-medieval ranges built through the early modern period. There is a cistern for water and probably fish, several residence blocks and the old chapel.
The chapel is key to note, as it is one of the oldest structures; consecrated in 1276 by William Wishart, the Bishop of St Andrews, it probably replaced a much earlier chapel to St Ninian, a missionary saint who is very popular in Scotland. The site of Dunnottar itself was likely inhabited as early as the fifth century by the Picts, and it was a religious site in the early Middle Ages, meaning that the construction of a defensive castle caused some upset. The pope even became involved in the dispute. Poignantly, the land that was graveyard is now mostly grass, with only one marker remaining.
The chapel may have been the site of a massacre of the English by William Wallace in 1297. Blind Harry, Wallace’s often unreliable biographer, relates that English soldiers had fled to Dunnottar for sanctuary – validating the site as a religious one – but that Wallace set fire to the chapel, burning many soldiers alive. The survivors were run off the edge of the cliff. The brutal story may not be completely true, but the may have gotten the gist of things.
A more complete history and many details can be found on the very helpful website for the castle.
A few highlights include a stay by Mary Queen of Scots – where didn’t she stay in Scotland? – and the protection of the Honours of Scotland (the royal regalia) during the invasion by Cromwell in the 1650s. One can spend a very pleasant time just sitting on one of the many benches and enjoying the view, over the sea or the castle grounds, which are impeccably well-kept.
Another option is to walk essentially around the edge of the rock, where you can enjoy the views down over a tremendous rock formation, and along the headland.
In all, you could easily spend several hours exploring the many nooks and crannies. The group I was with scattered to all corners of the castle, and it was lovely to sit in the sun and gradually wait for them all to drift back again, with various stories of things they had seen. Once we had traversed the stairs once more, we chose to walk along the cliff in the Stonehaven direction for about a mile, with the ocean and views of castle on one side and fields of cattle on the other.
There are a few caveats to visiting this castle – caveats may really be too strong a word, more things to be aware of when planning:
Firstly, as you have doubtless gathered, it is not particularly accessible. There are lots of steep steps just to get to the castle, and more inside as you ascend through the pends. Secondly, any refreshments you may want in the castle itself must be brought by you. This is of course quite reasonable, but considering the physical effort to traverse the stairs, it is worth remembering a water bottle. That said, the toilet facilities are limited, with only two stalls for the women and one for the men, I believe. At several points there was a bit of a queue – not a problem at all if you are prepared, but definitely worth knowing ahead of time. The one final disappointment to castle aficionados is that there is no shop selling merchandise, postcards, etc., though this is no doubt because the castle is owned and managed privately. Guide books are available at the ticket office at a very reasonable price.
Overall I’d say that the castle is not quite as suited for an onslaught of tourists as some others I have seen, but it is absolutely worth making the effort, especially if you are prepared!
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The Wandering Medievalist 