Agree with you Brian, too much pastry and too bland. The best I have found up here is at Davidson the butcher in Inverurie but still too small.
Cheese and oatcakes are great for lunch. I do like Primula but Norway gets much better flavours (or more varied).

Oatcrumbs more like...
I buy rolls and sliced cheese, usually Leerdammer these days at survives well. I like that full tummy feeling 😊

Thanks all for the replies (and offer to do a drop in Braemar). It was the Melton Mowbray pies I was thinking of - I know they aren't great but you sometimes crave what you can't have if its been long enough. I will be partaking of true pies (hopefully close to my mum's Scottish pie recipe!) and other treats as well. You have given me confidence I can scrounge enough together in my stops without doing any re-supply packages. Good to know I might even be able to grab a few pre-packaged backpacking meals along the way for a backup plan. Not being able to get Primula cheese for a quarter century or so really makes it a delicacy! See you all in the highlands and thanks again!

If I am ever anywhere near Ballater I always buy a couple of Scotch Pies from the shop next to the bus garage, sorry don't know the name. I would even say they are worth by-passing Braemar for and heading direct to Ballater!

And also in Ballater the butcher on the corner just down from the Alexandra Hotel ( Sheridan's ) makes a very fine black pudding . . . and their pies are not too shabby . . .

Peter, I'm guessing that you mean the old bus depot on Golf Road on the central square which is now the Coop supermarket. https://tinyurl.com/y9ccqpul
The shop that you are talking about will be Chalmers.