ABOUT THE COURSE

Ballindalloch Castle Golf Course, with its nine holes and 18 tees, provides a fair test for golfers of all standards. The golf course is set on the banks of the Avon River, among 150-year-old trees and with marvellous views of the surrounding purple heather-clad hills and native birch woods.

This Ballindalloch course was designed by Donald Steel and Tom Mackenzie, both internationally recognized golf course architects. They created a heady mix of challenging golf and aesthetic appeal, just as they have done at their other famous Scottish design, the Carnegie Course at Skibo Castle.
The layout delivers a par 72 over two levels, making the most of the natural landscape. A combination of wide fairways and narrow approaches give a course that is as testing as it is attractive.

The course is located immediately off the A95 and within easy reach of numerous hotels, distilleries and, of course, Ballindalloch Castle itself. There is also access to two Electric Vehicle charge points in the car park. The course can also be booked for exclusive use.

PLEASE PAY BEFORE YOU PLAY

When the Lagmore Café is open please sign in to and pay at the clubhouse. When it is closed payment can be made by cash or cheque (payable to Ballindalloch Castle Golfing Limited) using the envelopes provided in the tub at the front door. Please add to the front of the envelope your Name, Tee Off time, Date and Postcode for where you live.

This information will be kept for a period of at least 6 weeks to assist with contact tracing should the need arise.

Green Fees:

Adults: 9 holes (or more) ….. £20
22 years and under: 9 holes (or more) ….. £10
Season Ticket (for the period 1 April 2024 – 31 March 2025) ….. £156

Winter Green Fees (1 November – 31 March):

9 holes or more (Adult/22 years and under) ….. £10

(All prices include VAT)

For more information call 01807 500205, write to enquiries@ballindallochcastle.co.uk or pay a virtual visit to the Course on Facebook

LAGMORE CAFE

We are delighted to announce that on the 1 April 2024, Lagmore Café will reopen in the Clubhouse to welcome all visitors, local residents and golfers.

Homemade cakes, soups and sandwiches, grazing platters, teas, coffees and soft drinks

From 1 April it will open: 10am – 4pm Monday – Friday

From 2 June – October: 10am – 4pm Sunday – Friday

You can pay a virtual visit to the Lagmore Cafe on Facebook and Instagram, and you can contact them via email at gemmaduncan39@gmail.com.

With its magnificent baronial style castle, bounded by lovingly manicured grounds and a picturesque walled garden, Ballindalloch Estate offers the ideal Scottish Highlands venue for private functions, conferences, corporate hospitality, photo shoots and anything else you can think of – well, that is legal!

For business and corporate clients the Ballindalloch Estate, set amidst the tranquil Spey Valley, affords the perfect ‘escape to the country’ experience for professionals looking to freshen up their ideas and recharge their batteries. We can provide tailor-made itineraries and on-site support to make sure your organisation reaps the full benefits from its conference, seminar and team building activities. Ballindalloch Estate is conveniently situated for both Aberdeen and Inverness international airports.

The old fashioned splendour of the grounds and the unspoilt facade of our ‘fairy-tale’ castle make Ballindalloch Estate an excellent location for product launches, fashion shoots and brand marketing. The tasteful blending of Middle Ages fortification and later Georgian and Victorian gentrification also afford plenty of filmic opportunities for Location Managers looking for an authentic Scottish Highlands period setting. Onsite catering and accommodation can be provided for production teams and their support staff, together with props and casting facilities where required.

For all our guests there are a large variety of extracurricular activities available both on-site and nearby. Ballindalloch provides plentiful opportunities for traditional Highland country sports and our guests are welcome to try their hands at fly-fishing on the Rivers Spey and Avon or shooting and deer stalking upon the local moors; ably assisted and tutored by our experienced ghillies. We can also arrange an array of sporting activities outside of the Estate, including clay pigeon shooting, archery, white water rafting, off road driving and mountain orienteering.

Whatever your event, whether business or pleasure, our team here at Ballindalloch Estate will create a bespoke package customised to your individual requirements.

To find out more please contact us here.

You can contact us in the following ways.

Tel: 01807 500 205

Email: enquiries@ballindallochcastle.co.uk

Our postal address is:

Ballindalloch Estate Office
Ballindalloch
Banffshire
Scotland
AB37 9AX

 

The dark green, blue and black tartan and red heckles of the Black Watch, oldest of the Highland regiments, has become part of the iconography of Scotland and the history of the Am Freiceadan Dubh is interwoven with the history of Ballindalloch Castle.

Though today Badenoch and Strathspey is a haven for tourists, there was a time, four centuries past, when this part of the Highlands was a haven for rebellious clansmen and lawless bandits. Throughout the turbulent years of the English and Scottish Civil Wars the loyalties of the major Highland Clans were always volatile and at various times both royalists and republicans had found willing help in the mountains beyond Perth. The year 1645, for instance, had seen the flag of the Covenanters flying above Ballindalloch Castle, leading to its sacking by Royalist forces under the command of the Marquis of Montrose, who himself had sided with the Covenanters only a few months before.

The ‘pacification’ of the Highlands in the 1650s by government forces and subsequent Restoration of King Charles II encouraged the establishment of a permanent force to ‘watch over’ the region. Independent companies of loyal Highlanders were formed under the overall command of the Earl of Atholl. Alongside the clans Argyll, Murray, Menzies, Fraser and Munro, the Clan Grant offered its fealty to the newly restored Stuart monarchy by raising its own company of Highland troops to ‘watch over’ the territories of Badenoch and Strathspey.

Following the failed Jacobite Rebellions of 1689 and 1715, and the split loyalties once again evident amongst the Highland Clans, the independent regiments were disbanded, only to be revived again in the 1720s. At the request of Major-General George Wade – famous (or perhaps infamous) for overseeing the second ‘pacification’ of the Highlands in the aftermath of the 1715 uprising – six companies, each comprised of one hundred men, were to be raised and commanded by clan leaders loyal to the Crown. In Wade’s own words, these men were to be “employed in disarming the Highlanders, preventing depredations, bringing criminals to justice, and hinder rebels and attainted persons from inhabiting that part of the kingdom.”

One of these independent companies was formed under the command of Colonel William Grant, the 9^th Laird of Ballindalloch who, like his forefathers, took on the responsibility of ‘watching over’ Badenoch and Strathspey.

To set themselves apart from the existing regiments of the British Army, and to drum home their ‘independent’ identity, the soldiers of the Highlands eschewed the traditional red coat of the British soldier and donned the now famous dark green, blue and black tartan. This idiosyncratic uniform, when combined with the force’s primary role of ‘watching over’ the Highlands, gave rise to the Gaelic epithet Am Freiceadan Dubh: and the name ‘Black Watch’ was to stick.

In 1739 the independent Highland companies were brought together to become a ‘regiment of the line’ – the 43^rd, or Highland Regiment of Foot. Seven years later the 43^rds passed their first significant test of loyalty to the Crown, helping to put down (what proved to be) the final Jacobite Rebellion.

Records suggest that a significant number of the Black Watch serving in 1746 had relatives fighting alongside Bonny Prince Charlie. It may have helped that the regiment itself was stationed upon the Kent coast to repel any possible invasion from France. Nevertheless, companies of the Black Watch were involved in the bloody security operations that followed Culloden and carried out their duties without wavering.

Despite their indisputable loyalty, from the regiment’s inception and beyond, men of the Black Watch saw themselves as something apart from the British Army. Writing in 1822, one of their commanders, Major-General Sir David Stewart of Garth, wrote of his men that they were:

[O]f a higher station in society than that from which soldiers in general were raised; cadets of gentlemen’s families, sons of gentlemen farmers…men who felt themselves responsible for their conduct to high-minded and honourable families, as well as to a country for which they cherished a devoted affection. [cited in Trevor Royle, The Black Watch: A Concise History (2006) p.20]

This devotion to the Highlands would help sustain the morale of the Black Watch throughout the following centuries; fighting far from home upon the battlefields of Fallujah, Waterloo, the Somme, Ypres and Alamein, to name but a few. Today the proud military traditions of the Highland soldier are upheld by the 3^rd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland, or the ‘Black Watch’ as they still prefer to be known.

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Photos:
Header Image: Black Watch at Fontenoy, 1745 William Skeoch Cumming (1864-1929)
Soldier of the Black Watch. Engraving of Samuel MacPherson of the 43rd Regiment of Foot, National Army Museum, London
Black Watch recruits being reviewed on Glasgow Green, c.1758 Artist Unknown

Best known by the sobriquet Captain W.E. Johns, William Earle Johns was the creator of one of the best loved characters in English literature – Biggles. Drawing upon his time as an RAF pilot during the Great War, Johns penned over one hundred Biggles stories, charting the rip-roaring adventures of his eponymous fighter-pilot ace. He was also the author of over sixty other novels and factual works, as well as scores of magazine articles and short stories, and the brave new world of aviation remained his passion throughout his prolific writing career.

What is perhaps less well known is that Captain W.E. Johns wrote many of his Biggles stories here at Ballindalloch. In September 1944 Johns became the tenant of the 5^th Baronet, Sir George Macpherson-Grant, when he took up the lease on Pitchroy Lodge.

His attempts at re-joining the RAF had been thwarted (at 46 he was too old) and Johns had spent the period of the Blitz serving with his local ARP (Air Raids Precaution) unit in Reigate Heath, Surrey. For the majority of the war he had worked for the Air Ministry, helping with the recruitment and training of RAF and WAAF personnel.

His reasons for seeking refuge in the Highlands lie in the complexities of his private life. Unhappily married and with his wife refusing him a divorce, Johns wished to make a home with his long-term partner Doris Leigh, but without prejudicing his standing as a children’s author. So he chose Ballindalloch, far off the radar of polite London society. William and Doris were to make Pitchroy House their home for the next nine years.

Whilst staying here in Ballindalloch the ‘Captain’s’ output was prodigious and many of Biggles’s best known adventures – Biggles in the Orient (1945), Biggles Takes a Holiday (1949) and Biggles Takes the Case (1952) to name a few – were penned as his creator sat in his study looking out across the River Spey. In Biggles Delivers the Goods (April 1946) Captain W.E. Johns has his hero deliver the following soliloquy:

“While men are decent to me I try to be decent to them, regardless of race, colour, politics, creed, or anything else…I’ve travelled a bit, and taking the world by and large, it’s my experience that with a few exceptions there’s nothing wrong with the people on it, if only they were left alone to live as they want to live.”

It does not seem too much of a stretch of the imagination to conclude that Captain W. E. Johns found a place he could be ‘left alone to live how he wanted to live’ here at Ballindalloch.

Biggles fans regularly come to Speyside to soak up the scenery that inspired the author; apparently, if one is very observant it can even be recognised in passages of his books.