Grace Church Montrose

The red sandstone church sitting on the High Street in Montrose catches you immediately - Victorian Gothic done properly, without the overwrought bits. Grace Church went up in 1883, which means it's got that solid, confident feel of late 19th-century Scottish building when money was flowing and craftsmanship still mattered.

Inside, the stained glass is genuinely worth looking at rather than just glancing past. The woodwork's decent too - proper joinery, not the bodged bits you find in some older churches. It's an active parish church, so you'll find it open during reasonable hours, though it's worth checking locally before you trek down if you want to look inside properly.

This isn't the kind of place families will spend hours in unless they're seriously into ecclesiastical architecture, but it makes a good 20-minute stop if you're wandering Montrose's town centre. The building itself tells you something real about how a prosperous Victorian shipping town invested in itself.

If you're staying at St Cyrus Holiday Park just down the coast, it's barely five miles away - easy pop-in territory when you're exploring the area. Montrose harbour's right there too if you want to add a walk along the water. The church fits nicely into a morning's loose wandering rather than standing alone as the day's event.