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Learn about Duncan's Tours Scotland
You’re in safe hands with Duncan’s Tours Scotland. Our experience, knowledge, and passion make us ideal guides whether you visit the city centre, a historic castle, or a remote whisky distillery. We’re specialists in private, customised, flexible tours in the North East of Scotland.
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No matter where you want to go, we’re here to help. From castles and distilleries to mountains, stone circles, islands, and rivers, we show you the best parts of Scotland in comfort and style.
Our tours are suitable for up to six people, and there are also options for one or two persons that want to see the best parts of Scotland on their own.
Duncan Stuart Baker's Story
Duncan Stuart Barker was the first born son of three of Peter and Jessie Barker in Woking, Surrey, on the 6th of January 1954. He’s the son of a farm or agricultural bailiff, as it was described on my birth certificate. I was first located at a small cottage owned by a farmer at Send near Graffam near Guildford in the county of Surrey.
In 1956, Duncan and his family moved to a dairy farm near Hertford called Brickenden living in a Terrace of workers cottages built in 1910 intended as a model farm of tied cottages whereby if you got the sack you lost your home too , which came with the job. We had a backyard with outside WC and a tin bath as well as a large communal garden for Duncan to drive his red pedal car with a chrome front in.
In 1957, he sadly lost a brother called Michael Barker at 18 months old to pneumonia, but had another brother called Trevor Barker, born the next year, in August 1958.
As a result of my parents’ sad loss, they decided to move to Wimlands Farm near Faygate and between Horsham and Crawley in northwest Sussex near Gatwick Airport 25 miles south of London and 20 miles north of Brighton into another tied farm cottage of two side by side.
This was a brand new semi-detached house with an inside bathroom where Duncan’s father managed a 300-acre arable and poultry farm for the very wealthy semi-retired owner, Mr Philip Lucas. Lucas is the Director of an Aircraft company called Hawker Sidley, which produces the fighter aircraft called the Hawker Harrier, which was the first of its kind, a vertical takeoff jet.
Jessie Duncan’s mother came from a faraway tenant farm on the Seafield Estate owned by the Earl and Countess of Seafield, who resided at a stately home just outside Cullen called Cullen House. A feudal system stretching back many years was administered by the Factor at the Seafield Estates Office in Cullen, at a place called Deskford, nearby 4 miles south of Cullen on Keith Road.
Cullen was within the county of Banffshire but is now called Morayshire on the Moray Firth Coast. This area is rich in agriculture with cereals, dairy and fish, beautiful hills, green countryside, and a wonderful coastline. We visited this nice area 650 miles north of south east England every year in the 50’s and sixties each year…. usually in the summer hols for two weeks.
In the 1970’s Duncan began working in three local governments departments in west and mid Sussex and in 1977 he joined the Southern Water Authority within north West Sussex as a draughtsman recording measuring and drawing water mains in an operational department.
In 1980, he was offered a position as Technician / Draughtsman in Southern Waters, Isle of Wight division within a county called Hampshire, and Duncans took up the position in charge of all underground asset records on the island for ten years until 1990.
During the late sixties and seventies Duncan travelled all over the UK on his new motorcycle in 1972 after several years with two different mopeds before his new motorcycle and developed a liking for good scenery especially mountains which led him to paint several landscape oil paintings.
In 1972, when he was just 17, he discovered a small black house, called this because it was dark inside. He painted white on the outside in northwest Scotland in Sutherland at the Kyle of Tongue with the mountain Ben Loyal behind it, a picturesque scene of a thatched cottage, which he subsequently painted.
