Banff and the Bridge of Alvah

Passing Duff Royal Golf Club, the route leads to Duff House, begun in 1753 by William Duff, 1st Earl of Fife and designed by William Adam. Although never completed due to a quarrel between earl and architect, it is an outstanding Palladian masterpiece. Acquired by the Ministry of Works in 1956, it is now an outpost of the Scottish National Galleries.

An estate road leads through the Fife Gates into Duff House parkland. Deep in the wood is a stone ice house and the Duff family's Rococo mausoleum. The track sweeps downhill to the 18th-century Bridge of Alvah, spanning the River Deveron where precipitous crags tangle with vegetation and sea trout and salmon splash in deep clear pools.

The route skirts Montcoffer House (a dower house of the Duff family built in 1680) and returns through Montcoffer Woods to John Smeaton's handsome seven-arched bridge.

Nearby stands the site of the former Banff Bridge Station (built in 1870 to serve the railway line to Macduff, which offered special rates allowing fisherwomen to carry full fish baskets free of charge).

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.