Muchalls Castle

The drive south from Stonehaven takes you past farmland and fishing villages before Muchalls suddenly appears - a proper 17th-century castle that looks like someone's actually living in it, because someone is. Built in 1619, it sits on the Aberdeenshire coast with the kind of granite solidity you'd expect from this part of Scotland, all turrets and crow-stepped gables doing their best to impress.

You won't find gift shops or rope barriers here. This is a working castle, occupied by the family who own it, which means visiting is by appointment rather than just rolling up whenever. That's both frustrating and rather brilliant - it keeps the place from becoming a conveyor belt of tourist coaches. If you do manage to arrange a tour, you'll see interiors that haven't been stripped back to bare stone for authenticity's sake. There's actual furniture, actual character.

Historia types will find the internal plasterwork genuinely worth seeing, particularly the ornamental ceilings - they're the real draw beyond the impressive exterior. It's not a destination for kids after an hour of running about, and it won't take up your whole day. But if you're staying at Stonehaven Queen Elizabeth Park just up the road and you want to add something with genuine substance to your coastal break, the effort of arranging a visit pays off. The setting itself, on cliffs above the North Sea, makes for decent photographs even from the outside.