Above the door of Cromdale's parish church, a reused stone carries the date 1602 and the initials WG and EG, older than the church it now sits in. The present building went up in 1809 on the site of an earlier one and was recast late in the nineteenth century: six bays of rubble, round-headed windows, a birdcage bellcote, pine pews, a south gallery and a stencilled pine ceiling. Its walled burial ground holds local-slate stones from the 1700s and 1800s and a small watch-house, and a gate at the back leads down towards the old Boat of Cromdale ferry crossing.
The church sits low on the haughland by the former ford, which was rather the point of complaint. The New Statistical Account called the site "by no means convenient to the great bulk of the population," and until a suspension bridge opened in 1881 many parishioners reached it by ferry.
Cromdale itself is a long, thin settlement strung along the A95 where the road crosses Cromdale Burn, about five kilometres east of Grantown-on-Spey and just south of the River Spey. There is no shop, café or operating pub in the village; the Haugh Hotel, still the building that reads as its centre, has stood vacant for years. For supplies and a meal you go to Grantown, five kilometres west.
The Balliefurth Butcher and Farm Shop at Nethy Bridge sells beef and lamb from the nearby 400-acre Balliefurth Farm, along with venison, pork and poultry, its own sausages, burgers and pies, and Scottish cheeses, honey and cakes. In Grantown, the Craig Bar keeps local real ales, malt whisky and a fire-pit beer garden, and names its pies: "Kate & Sidney" for steak and kidney, "Free Ranger" for chicken, ham, leek and thyme, and a vegan "Mooless Moo" of mushroom, craft ale and black pepper. Robbie and Beryl run it.
Walking is the real reason to be here. From the village car park a track climbs to Creagan a' Chaise in the Cromdale Hills, ten miles and around five hours over rough, wet, partly pathless ground to two big summit cairns and a wide view over Speyside. A gentler local circuit starts by the kirk, follows the Spey past the ferry site and the restored station, then loops up to sixteenth-century Lethendry Castle and the Piper's Stone before crossing the battlefield. The Speyside Way runs through too, along the disused railway and forestry towards Tormore, never far from the road.
The battlefield is where the first Jacobite rising ended. On 1 May 1690 around 1,500 Jacobites under Thomas Buchan were camped on the exposed Haughs when Sir Thomas Livingstone's government troops forded the Spey in darkness, took the kirk outpost and surprised the camp. The army scattered. At Lethendry Castle, a modest L-plan tower house, government soldiers attacked a Jacobite outpost with grenades, an unusually early use of them against such a position, and much of that fabric survives inside a later farmstead. Above Claggersnich Wood, a boulder called the Piper's Stone is tied by local tradition to a wounded Jacobite piper said to have kept playing where he fell, though the tale may be Victorian.
Cromdale Station opened in 1863 on the Strathspey line with a whisky goods yard and a private branch to Balmenach Distillery. Passenger trains stopped in 1965; private owners bought the derelict building in 1994 and restored its exterior as a house. The Spey bridge nearby is a box-girder crossing put up in 1922 from First World War surplus girders, after suspension bridges were washed away in 1894 and failed again in 1921; the earlier piers are still visible upstream. The nearest working station now is Carrbridge, roughly twelve miles away as the crow flies on the Highland Main Line, and the 37A bus link between Grantown, Aviemore, Aberlour and Elgin calls at Cromdale, though it's worth checking times before you travel.
A mile north, Balmenach Distillery has made Caorunn Gin in small batches since 2009, using five hand-foraged Celtic botanicals and a working Copper Berry Chamber. The refurbished village hall, fitted with stage lighting and a sound desk, hosts concerts and ceilidhs, and the old school now houses Adventure Speyside, which takes pre-booked groups canoeing, gorge walking and abseiling.
The village keeps two dates of its own. On Easter Sunday there is a service on the bank of the Spey followed by bacon rolls, and at Christmas the carols are sung round the tree in the square before everyone goes into the hall for something warm.