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Dunnottar Castle is one of the finest ruined castles in Scotland and possibly the most spectacularly situated. It's a dramatic 9th century fortress set on a three sided sheer cliff and rock promontory jutting out into the sea, and two miles south of Stonehaven. 

The rock on which the castle is built consists of boulders and pebbles embedded in a red rock. It dates from the erosion of the Grampian Highlands in a very dry climate over 400 million years ago.

The castle is a dramatic ruin and an ideal location for the recent film version of  Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet starring Mel Gibson. It was once the principal fortress of the north-east and not without its fair number of sieges and memorable incidents. William Wallace burned the whole Plantaganet garrison here in 1297, while gruesome tales in the castle grounds tell of the torture of 122 men and 45 women Covenanters in 1685 -  (Coventers were Presbyterians and stood for political and religious liberty, leading to almost a century of persecution and their widespread migration to Ireland and the American colonies)  - an event recorded on the Covenanters' Stone in the churchyard with the words, "Whose dark shadow is for evermore flung athwart the Castled Rock". 

And it was at Dunnottar Castle that a small garrison held out against the might of Cromwell's army for eight months and saved the Scottish Crown Jewels, the 'Honours of Scotland', from destruction. The local minister's wife duped the Roundheads by being allowed into the castle to visit another woman. When she left, it was with the Regalia hidden beneath her clothes.

You can see the castle from the cycle route and if you venture nearer you can almost feel the atmosphere that the sieges and battles would have created.

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