Oldmeldrum Sports and Highland Games
Known locally as the Sunshine Sports, this Aberdeenshire gathering first held in 1930 combines traditional heavy events with athletic competitions in the heart of a rural market town.
A solid Aberdeenshire market town with a conservation-area core of granite streets, a genuinely award-winning real-ale pub in the Redgarth, and the Glen Garioch distillery on its doorstep - more rewarding than a drive-through, but not a destination in its own right.
Cottages, B&Bs and hotels near Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire.
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"The Royal Deeside market town of Banchory hosts its agricultural show each August at the gateway to the Cairngorms, where Aberdeenshire beef and Highland cattle are judged against a backdrop of the Forest of Birse and the River Dee shining in the valley below."
Banchory Show
"The March of the Lonach Highlanders, kilted men with pikes walking the glen, precedes a day of games at Strathdon."
Lonach Highland Gathering
"One of Scotland's most distinctive gatherings, the Lonach sees kilted clansmen march twelve miles carrying pikes before the Highland Games begin at Bellabeg in the upper Don valley."
Lonach Highland and Friendly Society Gathering
"The most famous of the Highland games, with tossing the caber, hill races and massed pipe bands, often attended by royalty."
Braemar Gathering
"Four days of Aberdeenshire artisan food producers, local folk musicians and community spirit in a Royal Deeside village, where the September apple harvest season and the warmth of a rural Scottish gathering make for an unusually nourishing weekend."
Tarland Food and Music Festival
"The Royal Deeside village that sits at the foot of the hills above Balmoral holds its Christmas market each December in a setting in the Cairngorms National Park that very few other Christmas markets anywhere in Britain can match for sheer backdrop."
Ballater Christmas Market
"Massed pipe bands lead the chieftain's parade from the Bridge Hotel to Couper Park in this small fishing village on the far northeast coast."
Helmsdale and District Highland Games
"The last free games in the Highlands, where Games Day on the seaside Links feels like New Year, opened by Lord Cawdor himself."
Nairn Highland Games
"Scotland's premier sheepdog competition over four days at Letham Farm in the Ochil Hills, where the nation's finest handlers qualify for the International and the once-every-three-years World Trial."
Scottish National Sheepdog Trials
"Heavy events, wrestling and a 10K road race come to The Stadium in the genteel Victorian island resort of Rothesay."
Bute Highland Games
"A secluded Perthshire glen games in the hills above Blairgowrie, where the heavy events take place on a field ringed by heather moorland and the highland dancing stage backs onto birch woodland."
Strathardle Highland Games
"The Argyllshire Gathering at Mossfield Stadium in Oban is the premier Games event of the west coast, featuring a ceremonial parade from Station Square and first-class piping and heavy athletics."
Argyllshire Gathering (Oban Highland Games)