The Dee arrives from the highest moorland in Britain. The Wells of Dee sit at over 1,200 metres on the Braeriach plateau — the highest source of any major river here — and for the entire 140 kilometres down to Aberdeen, you feel that altitude in the water. Everything is granite country: clear water over clean stone, the kind of clarity that comes when a river has run down through the Cairngorms and picked up nothing else. Upper Deeside is confined and steep, cut into the granite in step-pool and gorge. Named features mark the geometry: the Falls, the Chest, the Linn where the whole flow is compressed through a 300-metre rock slot. Wading here is serious work — granite slabs grow algae, the gradient is relentless — and the rock is the wading hazard. But in these gorges you see the Dee as it truly is: transparent enough that every lie, every obstruction, every pale spawning gravel shows itself with absolute clarity. Below Braemar, the river finds room to breathe. Through Royal Deeside the pools open on cobble and coarse gravel — still granite country, but broken down clean, without the silt and compromise that haunts other rivers. The sequences move gently: riffle into pool, pool into the next easy run. By Banchory the river has settled into longer glides, and the sense is of a stream that has found its proper pace, finally content.

Wading: Algal slick granite slabs in upper gorges