Balmoral Castle
Balmoral Castle is undoubtedly the jewel in the crown of the Scottish palace construction. This beautiful castle is located in the county of Aberdeenshire. It was built to serve the summer residence of the British royal family. Balmoral and the surrounding properties were bought by Queen Victoria, who was married to Prince Albert.
Since then, the Family castle is transmitted from generation to generation, but since there is adjacent land it is becoming larger. Today Balmoral extends over an area of 26, 000 hecters, as it holds the incredibly beautiful River De . The story of the castle begins back during the Middle Ages, when Sir William Drummond took the place of today's Balmoral estate in his family in 1390, before that between 1316-1390, King Robert II then used it as a hunting lodge building.
The history of Balmoral as a royal residence starts from 1848 when the house was rented to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In his diaries he describe his favorite queen castle as, "my dear paradise in the Highlands”. To this day the Queen spends her summer vacation in the beautiful halls of Balmoral, which are complemented by a beautiful garden.
Over the years the royal family contributes to the development of the palace, continuous care for harmony of the flora and fauna. Singularly, but many, the beautiful gardens around Balmoral recently made Duke of Edinburgh, which extends the flower and vegetable garden while also building a water garden. The water garden is situated in the western part of the main park between the beautiful trees.
Today at Balmoral hundreds of people work to care of the ecological balance in the mansion. According to relatives of the royal family, Elizabeth has been committed to "green" activities for over 20 years. In Balmoral they have developed a project that provides a small hydro power plant to produce electricity for the castle.
The power plant will be about one megawatt, which will be enough for royal use and about 1000 households in the vicinity. In order to protect the environment in recent years cars serving Queen Elizabeth II were replaced with cars running on gas.
