The Square is a pleasant broad boulevard at the centre of town that narrows into High Street westward. Around it cluster the working buildings of a small Highland market town: a Co-op Food open daily until ten, the Claymore Bar at 12 High Street, the Cairngorms Farmers Market once a month, and assorted hotels, cafes, and shops that have served visitors since the Victorian era. High Street Merchants at 74 High Street started as an art gallery that served coffee and gradually inverted into a cafe that sells art. It is open Wednesday to Sunday. The Royal British Legion building on the Square is in fact a 1920s Art Deco cinema that closed in the early 1960s and was converted to a hall. The town's other landmark, an early-19th-century clock tower attached to the former Speyside Orphanage, sits a short walk from the Square; the orphanage closed in 1975 and the building is now flats.

Anagach Woods begin at the east edge of town. Marked trails through the pine forest take one to three hours and pass through habitat that supports red squirrels, capercaillie, and red deer. The capercaillie - a great wood grouse, almost extinct in Britain a few decades ago and still extremely susceptible to disturbance - is the local star species; you may not see it, and the trails are deliberately designed so that you do not need to. Cairngorms National Park's closest large section to Grantown is Abernethy Forest, accessed above Nethy Bridge a few miles southwest. It is a remnant of the original Caledonian pinewood, and much of it is RSPB nature reserve. The Speyside Way long-distance trail follows the heritage railway from Aviemore as far as Broomhill, then turns northeast along the old trackbed via Nethy Bridge to Grantown and onward to Ballindalloch and the Spey estuary. The Dava Way takes the other former railway alignment, twenty-three miles between Grantown and Forres through woodland and heath.

Dulnain Bridge, three miles west on the A95, has at its east entrance several roche moutonnées - 'sheep rocks' - boulders polished smooth by static ice and left behind when the glaciation receded. The Cairngorm Ice Age was a peculiarly stationary affair: ice sat atop the mountains, polished them smooth, and rarely moved as glaciers to carve the U-shaped valleys you see elsewhere in the Highlands. The 'erratics' left here look like a flock of sheep in the distance. Five miles south of Grantown lies Cromdale, a tiny village whose name attaches to one of Scottish history's more misleading ballads. The Haughs of Cromdale, a stirring Jacobite song, celebrates the battle here in May 1690 as a bold Highland victory. It was nothing of the sort. King James VII and II had been ousted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and his forces continued to resist. In 1690 they marched into the Spey valley hoping to gather support, were weakened by desertion, met government forces at Cromdale on 30 April, and were scattered by them. A thick fog let some Jacobites regroup overnight, but the next day they were routed. Fleeing southwest, the remnants tried to seize Loch an Eilein castle near Aviemore but were repulsed by the stout widow who held it. Thus ended King James's last stand in Scotland. His son the 'Old Pretender' and his grandson 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' would resume the cause, with diminishing success, until Culloden in 1746 ended it for good.

Whisky distilleries are mostly further east in proper Speyside; from Grantown the nearest open for tours are Tomintoul, Cragganmore, and Ballindalloch. Balmenach, just two miles east of town, makes Caorunn Gin from the same Speyside water and copper that elsewhere produce single malt. The steam-hauled Strathspey Railway runs ten miles between Aviemore and Broomhill, its planned extension to Grantown blocked for now by the A95 road. Anagach GC and the nine-hole Abernethy GC near Nethy Bridge serve those who want to walk after a good ball. Strathspey Thistle play football in the Highland League fifth tier at Seafield Park. The Tomintoul Highland Games, the Grantown Agricultural Show, the Abernethy Highland Games, and Truck In2 Grantown - a lorry rally - all happen in summer; the dates shift each year. Aung San Suu Kyi has a plaque. Queen Victoria, Robert Burns, and a planned grid of Georgian streets do not need one.