Bellabeg has kept a shop and post office going for 128 years, and in 2022 it was named the best independent community store in Scotland. It sits on the A944, the practical centre of an informal upland area. The parish once called Invernochty runs some sixteen miles by six along the upper Don, taking in Glenbuchat and Corgarff, so Strathdon is more an area than an address; Bellabeg is its main settlement.
Up the A939 at Corgarff, Goodbrand & Ross has been a tearoom, knitwear and gift shop since 2005. The kitchen turns out freshly cooked soups, toasties, baked potatoes, traybakes and homemade scones, with gluten-free and vegan choices, and the shelves carry Scottish knitwear, Scandinavian goods and premium spirits. Only assistance dogs come indoors, but there is extensive outdoor seating, some of it covered, where other dogs are welcome.
At Forbestown, the Steading Bar occupies a converted farm steading; it is worth checking that it is currently open before making a special trip. Lynne and Marc Lino opened it in June 2019, buying a deteriorating former hotel site and setting out to replace the social focus the village had lost when the old hotel bar closed. Local tradesmen reused what materials they could and hung a found log from the ceiling as a light fitting. Its menu has featured hot pies, nachos, sausage rolls and sharing platters, alongside board games, a fire, a garden, and, by more than one account, owls in the dark outside.
The walking starts close to Bellabeg and Forbestown. A short circuit from Roughpark climbs to the Doune of Invernochty, the grassy motte that dominates the strath: an oval mound eighty metres by forty and about twelve high, probably raised by the Earl of Mar around 1200 with a water-filled moat fed from a dammed lake. The path there runs up an avenue planted for forty-two local men killed in the two world wars, then crosses boardwalk and passes ponds and mature trees. For something longer, the Lonach Loop rises behind Forbestown, over farmland and the Don past Lonach Hall, and Ben Newe repays a strenuous, often muddy climb with a medieval well and a trig point at the summit.
A two-mile out-and-back walk reaches Poldullie Bridge, a single steep arch dated 1715 and one of only two local bridges to survive the flood of 1829, when the water came within a few feet of its keystone. A. Laing thought the spot worth recording in 1828: "The prospect here is luxuriously grand, wild, picturesque and sublime."
The parish church was built in 1853 to a design by James Matthews. It has a broach-spired tower, a hammerbeam roof and galleries, and marble monuments to the Forbes family; Sir Charles Forbes paid £1,874 of its £2,100 cost. Set into its walls are carved heraldic panels from the earlier church on the site, dated 1597, 1636 and 1686.
Sir Charles Forbes also founded the Lonach Highland and Friendly Society in 1823, its members drawn from the men of Strathdon. On the fourth Saturday of August the Lonach Highlanders still march in tartan across the glen to the Gathering, as they have for close to two centuries.
For families, the Lecht sits at 2,090 feet up the A939, with twenty ski runs and fourteen lifts, a Penguin Park for children aged two to eight, and lift-served mountain biking once the snow goes. Corgarff Castle, with the star-shaped wall the army built around it, and the ruins of Kildrummy are both nearby.
A car is the sensible way to come and to get around. The nearest railway station is at Huntly, a long road transfer away, and the 219 bus to Alford runs a very limited service, worth checking before you rely on it. In winter the A939 over the Lecht can turn severe, so it is worth checking the road before setting out.
One of the local signposts points simply to Lost. It is a real place, marked on the path map and the road signs, and worth a photograph on the way past.