Half way between Braemar and Tomintoul is a place that few have ever heard off, and even fewer (Excepting for royalty and the super wealthy hunter sportsmen) have ever seen.

Inchrory, lies at the south entrance to Glen Avon in the very heart of the Cairngorms..

Flowing through the length of the glen is the river A’an, it running over granite beds, it’s said to be the purest and clearest river in all of Scotland.

It was here in this beautiful remoteness that my ancestral family for generations farmed, fought, and some more than often died for what they thought and believed was right.

It was with such thoughts in mind that I started a journey of enquiry and latter day discovery.

It was not for me the arduous journey by foot or the ubiquitous highland garron of yesteryear; instead, I had the relative speed and comfort of a Triumph Trophy TR6 trials bike.

I could go where few men had ever set foot.

Having called to the Glenlivet estate / Crown Estate office, and explained the purpose of my visit.

I obtained permission to travel to Inchrory and possibly beyond.

(Purely a precautionary measure, being mistaken for a twelve point stag by gun happy gentry, would not necessarily entail a royal epitaph)

Having just left the drab symmetrical pattern of Tomintoul (reputed to be the highest village in Scotland) I was immediately struck by the immense beauty, of the woodlands guarding the entrance to Glen Avon.

Here was paradise in its own private arborescence.

How could one not be envious of the extremely wealthy (and some not so wealthy) living in such an idyllic setting?

O’ A’an, how you now rush headstrong
through wild gorges of creation.
What haste you have for tempest song;
when silver birch gives cation.

Glen Avon, is a glen of contrasts, from it luxurious woodlands it changes abruptly to where bare forbidding mountains flank each side of the glistening river like silent sentinels watching as I thundered along its single track, even I would not have dared attempt to venture up their steep and forbidding sides.

O dark melancholy,what scenes you’ve seen
In that, many millennia’s of waiting
Where ice had swept your rough granite clean
And left behind a texture of its making.

There is no sign of past habitation now, except for an occasional gamekeeper’s cottage situated in sheltered grassy dells alongside the river.

The river abounds with trout and salmon. Several deaths have been reported regarding those apparently deceived by its clearness and misleading depth.

O A’an, what many lives you’ve claimed:
in careless crossing of your water.
Your crystal clearness, it deceives the eye
and more: than journeys falter.

Staying with the single track as it follows the rivers twist and turns for a good ten miles, I suddenly came upon the magnificence of Inchrory lodge, it now said to be owned by the Sultan of Brunei.

Your, Royal Highness of Brunei;
What credit to you meets the eye.
If you should come these ways about
Think of those, who lived here without.

In simple style
and yet prepared to fight and die
for this bit land.
Far from your bright Malaysian Sky.

General Wade requisitioned the former home, of my ancestral family, in 1746 on behalf of the Hanoverian government, to be used as an army barracks and outpost for patrols searching for Jacobite rebels and whisky smugglers.

It has now been converted into a luxury-hunting lodge for the super wealthy, ever eager to shoot the red grouse and hunt for deer in the extensive deer forests that stretch all the way to the Braes of Mar.

I saw a’ thae wee fella’s arriving
wi guns an’ a’ kinds o’ strange stuff.
maist drest up in green shooting jackets
It seems to me, and thae Bodach
Some creatur’s life is going to be rough

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Nothing is now left of the former farm steadings or graveyard, where a Catholic priest would travel ten miles on horseback from the Scalan seminary every Sunday to conduct mass around a stone in the middle of nowhere.

The Scalan too was burned to the ground in 1746 by the Hanoverian troops.

 Having, now reached my journey’s objective, I tried to visualise its previous centuries old setting.

I looked upon dereliction
a now forgotten lonely farm.
Its broken stones lay scattered
downstream from all folk’s harm.

Like Catholics past devotion
their graveyard lost to tine:
long side a cold clear A’an
remains they of Auld Lang Syne.

Where Galloway and red shaggy kyloe,
came down from shielings purlieu hill.
To give their lowing call: from winter silo
now empty, as a gauger’s barren still

No laughter heard or children play
nor peat fires burn their smoky welcome
 For all who may so pass its way
In wars own aftermath:and strange
religious hatred’s maelstrom.

My family gone, to lands of different clime
no, need them to seek thoughts of return.
To grieve the burning bush’s false largition
towards a race that goes far back in time.

Or curse, those rogues of nobleness
that sought betray proud Scotia’s station
for English guinea’s bribe an’ silver
and Queensberry’s of Stuart’s damnation.

O Darien how your scheme did die
bled by King Billy’s hand and lie.
That drained auld Scotland’s coffers dry
and still some folk need to ask why.

A thousand years of life’s narrator;
swept, away like leaves before a storm
by the guilty amain of law’s attainder.
Its minder: red stooked in its form
in grievous act of settlement
and treachery’s rich law lords of prole.

Now only blacken ruins remain
a vertu and curiosities sheol.

Strangely enough, subsequent members within the family did return to Inchrory for a time as tenants until their newly acquired English lordships decided by virtue of the Highland clearances that sheep and deer stalking were to be considered substantially more profitable.

Sir Walter Scott and Dick Lauder in his highland tales both dramatized Inchrory, as he was known and his first cousin John Roy Stuart (leader of the Jacobite rebellion and renown Gaelic poet) in their varied adventures.

Mor.