Lost Deeside

Deeside, the southern border of the North-east shires of Aberdeen and Banff, is very much frontier country - its lonely passes through a barely penetrable mountain range were of massive strategic importance for centuries. The legions of Emperor Septimus Severus came in by Elsick Mounth in the early third century AD, and the B974 Fettercairn-Banchory road marks the way taken by Edward I's army as it withdrew from the North-east in 1296, as well as the route Macbeth took to his doom two and a half centuries before.