During stays at Balmoral, Queen Victoria regularly travelled the Mounth Roads, a network of ancient rights of way traversing the Grampian Mountains between Angus, in the south, and Aberdeenshire, in the north. The ornate Queen’s Well, in Glen Mark, was erected to mark her passage, with husband Prince Albert, on September 20, 1861.
The couple were travelling south over the hills to the Ramsay Arms in Fettercairn, where they ate dinner and spent the night before returning the following day to Balmoral, via the Cairn o’Mount road.
The spring – originally called White Well – lies to the right of the Mounth Road and a grassy path branching off the main route offers an optional detour to this well known local landmark.
Glen Mark
The day dawned misty but the couple were due in Fettercairn that evening for dinner so, after breakfast, the Royal party set off in two carriages from Balmoral, driving east along Deeside to Ballater where, at Bridge of Muick, six ponies awaited them.
Accompanied by five ghillies (among them the legendary John Brown) and a seventh pony drafted in to carry the lunch basket, Queen Victoria and her entourage set off, following the old drovers’ road across the rolling peaty hills to Glen Tanar. The mist was slowly lifting, the sun breaking through.
They crossed Water of Glen Tanar below Shiel of Glentanar and, after enjoying the ‘fine and wild’ view down the valley, began their ascent of Mount Keen, described by the Queen in her diary as a curious conical hill of ‘great beauty’.
After a steep and rough ascent, most of the group dismounted from their ponies and walked across the shoulder of the mountain where, on the county boundary, they were met by Lord Panmure, laird of the lands to the south.He rode with them down the valley of the Ladder Burn to a cottage – then a forester’s lodge – at the foot of the slope, passing a group of shearers, mainly women, travelling in the opposite direction. There the party paused for lunch, sheltering in what the Queen described as ‘an uncommonly small, poky little room’.
‘Afterwards I sketched the fine view,’ she added. ‘We remounted our ponies after three and rode down Glen Mark, stopping to drink some water out of a very pure well, called the White Well.’
Mount Keen from the Mounth Road
The sturdy hill ponies satisfactorily concluded the journey to Invermark Castle where, after a visit to Lord Panmure’s granite shooting lodge, the Queen and her travelling companions continued down Glen Esk in a pair of carriages. After a journey of 40 miles over the hills and through the glens, they arrived at the Ramsay Arms, Fettercairn, at 7.30pm, in time for dinner at eight, the Queen content that she had passed through the village quite unnoticed.
The ornate crown-shaped structure over the well was later erected by Lord Dalhousie (formerly Lord Panmure) to commemorate the visit. Beneath stone arches, water gurgles up into a bowl that carries the inscription: ‘Rest traveller, on this lonely green, and drink and pray for Scotland’s Queen.’
The Royal party spent the night at the Ramsay Arms before returning to Balmoral over the Cairn o’Mounth Road the following day.
Later in the same year, Prince Albert died but Queen Victoria visited Glen Mark again in 1865 with her daughter Princess Helena. Four years to the day after their first visit, it was something of a pilgrimage for the Queen who was still silently mourning her late husband. Leaving Balmoral early on September 19, the pair transferred to ponies at Bridge of Muick and, accompanied by ghillie John Brown, retraced their steps of 1861 up and over Mount Keen and were once again met by Lord Dalhousie, this time at the foot of the Ladder Burn. The Queen paused to admire the well, remarking in her diary that is was ‘built of an arch of white stones in the shape of the ancient crown of Scotland. Really very fine.’
Sign at Invermark
‘Had some tea close by; after drinking with sorrowing hearts from this very well from which, but just four years ago, I had drunk with my beloved Albert,’ she added. ‘It was quite like a pilgrimage.’
After a brief visit to Loch Lee, Victoria and her daughter spent the night at Invermark Lodge as guests of Lord Dalhousie. The visit to Glen Mark and the well left her tired and emotional, as her diary revealed.
Confiding in her journal, she wrote: ‘Felt tired and bewildered, for the first time in my life without mother or husband, alone, in a strange house, and the thought overwhelmed me. It seemed so dreadful. How many a visit dearest Albert and I paid together and how we enjoyed them!’
Mother and daughter returned over the Mounth to Balmoral the following morning, accompanied by faithful ghillie John Brown.
From a small car park at the end of the public road through Glen Esk, near Invermark, the Queen’s Well is a 4km walk or cycle following a good track through Glen Mark.
Extract from Mounth Roads – A Walkers’ Guide by James Carron, a guide to 11 routes across the Mounth, available as a paperback or ebook from Amazon
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