A939/Cock Bridge - Ballater

North West | A93

Route

Cock Bridge - Gairnshiel

Just after crossing the meandering Don for the first time at Cock Bridge, a right turn leads out to Corgarff Castle, a historic site converted into Barracks after the Jacobite uprisings. It sits perched on the hillside making a dramatic landmark from the surrounding hills. Paths and tracks lead past the castle following the Don to its headwaters, where a pass leads over into Glen Avon. From here walkers and cyclists can explore this remote area, turning back towards Tomintoul, heading west deep into the Cairngorms, or south towards Gairnshiel or Braemar. The road, however, turns round to head east through a patch of forestry before crossing the Don again at Luib Bridge.

As the Don meanders away to the south, the A939 climbs a little and passes through the scattered settlement of Corgarff, with a small picnic site or the shop / cafe offering a pleasant place to pause for a moment. After the dramatic climbs and descent to cross the Lecht pass, the road through Strathdon is quiet and relaxing. It is narrow and windy, keeping traffic slow, and giving it time to enjoy the views. It doesn't last long, however. The road winds along the bottom of the steep valley side, with a green field between it and the river, then just after a forestry plantation starts on the hillside, the A939 meets the junction with the A944. The layby opposite the junction has one of the last remaining modern AA phone pillars, but this is little consolation for the A939 which is forced to TOTSO for the fifth and last time.

Colnabaichin Bridge

Immediately after turning right, the A939 crosses the Don for the last time on Colnabaichin Bridge, and soon starts climbing through the forest. The trees stand back from the roadside, a few cottages standing in the clearings, but the climb gets steeper and steeper until the road emerges from the forest. The road can then be seen climbing away in the distance across the moor, and while the gradient briefly eases, the road is soon climbing again. A sharp right kink leads to the steepest section of the climb, the corner forcing traffic to slow and change down several gears to maintain momentum. The road continues to climb, wiggling across the heather clad hillside as it does so, until finally the summit is reached in a dip between the hills. This is the last summit on the route, and at 550m high it is the second highest, but it never seems such a big climb as the others.

The descent down into Glen Fenzie is quick, a series of straights making light work of the easier gradients on this side of the pass. Then a short climb takes the road over into Glen Gairn, where the descent steepens and becomes windier, eventually dropping to a wide single track as it enters the trees. There is generally enough room for two cars to squeeze past each other, but not always, and a couple of the corners are blind until the last minute. At the bottom stands the historic and dramatic single arch of Gairnshiel Bridge. This is another of the old stone bridges built by Major Caulfeild in the 1750s, although it too is being replaced in 2022/3 by a new bridge a short distance downstream. The new bridge will bypass the steep hump backed bridge and so allow longer vehicles to navigate the route for the first time.

Gairnshiel Bridge before replacement

Gairnshiel - Ballater

Shortly after crossing the bridge, and in front of Gairnshiel Lodge, the A939 turns round to the left at the junction with the B976. For a time the A939 turned right here and headed south west towards Braemar, but it now heads south east towards Ballater. The new bridge, perhaps incredibly, introduces yet another TOTSO junction onto the A939 route, with the road from the bridge giving way to the existing line. It will, however, see a short section of the old single track widened on either side of the bridge to permit full two-way traffic. As the road winds eastwards, however, through the woodlands of Glen Gairn it is single track for over a mile, and even when it does become wider, it is rarely wide enough for a centre line.

This then is the final leg of the A939, and while Glen Gairn is home to a scattering of properties, most lie on the far side of the river, with only footbridges or fords connecting them to this stretch of the road. A few houses lie along the roadside as it winds through the trees, with glimpses out across the river to the far side of the valley. Then, after a particularly sharp right hander on a slight crest, the trees thin out and small fields lie between the road and river once more. The road is winding southwards now, between tumbledown stone walls and straggly wire fences. The centre line resumes, and the road straightens up a little, but this is nearly the end. After all those spectacular miles of tarmac through the mountains, the A939 drops down the last few metres to meet the A93 at a simple T junction near the Bridge of Gairn, about a mile west of Ballater in beautiful Deeside.

History

The southern end of the A939 in 1956

When first classified in 1922, all of this section was the B970. However, between 1944 and 1946 the A939 was extended south from Grantown to Gairnshiel Bridge, and then turned southwest, just as the military road had done, to meet the A93 at Balmoral. The rump of the former B970 was renumbered as an extension of the B972. This situation lasted until 1974, when the A939 was diverted on to its current route towards Ballater.

Military Road

As with the rest of the A939 route, a lot of this section owes its existence to the military road constructed under the direction of Major Caulfeild in the 1750s. However, there is perhaps less which remains on line south of Cock Bridge. For starters, there is some confusion about the route of the military road in the Cock Bridge / Corgarff area. The old line down the Lecht ran further north than the modern A939, dropping in to the valley of the Milltown Burn. The burn was crossed near Auchmore farm, and then the old road followed the farm drive down to the A939. However, this road continued down Strathdon towards Aberdeen, and was only later connected (as far as can be identified) to the route over to Gairnshiel.

Another road forded the Don at Auchmore and headed upstream to Corgarff Castle, and this seems to partially survive as a track through the forest. A further junction, roughly where the A939 still crosses the castle road then continued south east for a short distance along the modern A939 line. If this all seems a little convoluted, then General Wade had created a similarly odd set of junctions at Fort Augustus on his road through the Great Glen 30 years earlier, and it has to be remembered that these roads were built primarily for marching soldiers, few of whom would have been bypassing the barracks at Corgarff, instead this would have been their destination.

The road on the south bank of the Don branches off the modern A939 at a wide forestry entrance and climbs in a series of long straights past Ordgarff and Delachuper before emerging onto the open hillside. There are a couple of ruinous old stone bridges which are clearly military bridges, and a milestone along this section. Once out of the trees, the straights continue for about half a mile, before the hillside forces a series of twists and turns above Delavine Farm. It does straighten up again, but before long the modern A939 is ahead, with the old and new roads meeting at the sharp corner. The A939 climbing up from Colnabaichin Bridge also has some hallmarks of being a military road, but is not specifically mentioned in the available records.

Continuing south, the road up and over the hill to Gairnshiel Bridge is almost entirely on the line of the military road, but after the bridge the military road turned right and headed down towards Braemar.