STIRLING CASTLE

                           Site of Famous Battle

             The narrow winding road leading to Stirling Castle was flanked on one side with a low flagstone wall, but our driver expertly maneuvered the van over the narrow road, we learned that castles or forts were most often built on a hill, the rockier the better. Owners aimed for an uninterrupted 360-degree view of the countryside, and a water source was essential. If castles were built on more level ground they were surrounded by a water moat.

      Where you find a castle or fort you’re likely to find a palace nearby. The fortification was for protection and where everyone hurried to when threatened. The palace is where the owner lived.

         Stirling Castle’s strategic position made it the grandest prize in the Scot Wars of Independence in the late 13^th and early 14^th centuries. There is an old Scottish saying that whoever holds Stirling Castle, holds the kingdom. The castle, located at the country’s narrowest point, or ‘waist’, provides an excellent view at the top where one can see coast to coast. The lowest bridge over the River Forth is here which made it a preferred place to cross the river. Stirling Castle, rich in history, dates back to the Middle Ages and is the dividing line between the low lands and Highlands.

         The castle commands the countryside for miles around towering over several important battlefields of Scotland’s past including Stirling Bridge. In that battle, 1297, William Wallace outwitted and overpowered the English army enabling Robert the Bruce to overthrow the English in 1314 when he defeated England’s 20,000-man army with a mere 6000 troops. The statue of William Wallace can be seen from the castle.

The castle was the seat of both King James IV and James V, both of whom added to the castle. James V favored the Renaissance style, which was relatively unknown in Briton at that time. Mary Queen of Scots lived here the first four years of her life, and was crowned here. Bonnie Prince Charles’s army stopped here in 1746 after his defeat. The castle has been an army barracks and now is the headquarters of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

       We wandered all through the castle and enjoyed fantastic views of the surrounding countryside on a very clear day. Seven battlefields and Stirling Bridge are visible from the castle.

      The ancient town of Stirling grew up around its castle. Much of the old city wall remains. It is now the central train and highway crossroads of the country and is only a short distance from many of the country’s attractions. It is a favorite getaway for people in Glasgow and Edinburgh, as it is just about half way between the two cities.

SCOTLAND'S WESTERN ISLANDS

                                   An Interesting Day
         From our hotel in Ballachulish it was an hour drive to Oban where we caught a ferry for a 45-minute ride across the Firth of Lorn to the Isle of Mull in the  Hebrides. The Mull ferry ran on a schedule. The waters were calm on a beautiful sunny clear day. We passed by an island where the MacLean clan Castle Duart was situated. We could see visitors on the island and the castle looked to be in pretty good repair as it under-went restoration after W W II. 

Once on Mull we traveled what was called a one track road. There was virtually no traffic we only had to pull over a couple of times to let a car heading in the opposite direction pass. The Isle of Skye is the largest in the Inner Hebrides, but Mull at 40 X 5-6 miles is the second largest.

Isle of Mull, wettest island in the chain, is wild and mountainous, with sea lochs and sandbars. Until recently only geologists, bird watchers and an occasional fisherman or mountain climber visited the Hebridean islands. Today the islands that make up the Inner Hebrides are becoming more accessible to the general visitor.         The area is rich in legend, folklore, land of ghosts, monsters, wee folk, and wild life. The wild countryside was the scene for Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. The highest peak is Ben More at 3169 feet, but there are many flat areas.

Mull’s population is 1200 and the isle has the largest concentration of golden eagles in the world. The scenery we rode over was pretty desolate with wilderness, peat bogs, heather, evergreen bracken covered glens and grass covered hills.            

After an hour and a half on the narrow road we reached the end of Mull and took a passenger ferry for a five-minute ride across the Sound of Mull to the Isle of Iona. This small ferry makes turn- around trips all day, so it is never a very long wait for a ferry. We were told there are no cars on the small island, but we did see a couple running supplies and occasionally people. The 1 X 3.5 mile island of Iona is a remote low lying green, treeless island with high cliffs and rolling meadows

         In 563 AD St. Columba arrived in Iona to convert the Celts to Christianity. He built a church, and the Isle is known as the Cradle of Christianity. Columba’s monastery survived repeated Norse sackings, but finally fell into disrepair about the time of the reformation. The oldest building on the island is St. Oran, built in 1080.

It has been said that when Edinburgh was a barren rock and Oxford but a swamp, Iona was famous.  Known as a place of spiritual power and pilgrimage for centuries, it is the site of the first Christian settlement in Scotland.

The dukes of Argyll owned the island from 695 until the 12^th century when the duke was forced to sell it to pay a million in real estate taxes. Sir Hugh Fraser, former owner of Harrods, purchased the island. Located on the island’s most sheltered spot is Baille Mor, the only village on Iona.

In 1930 Rev. George Mcleod, a Glasgow minister, arrived in Iona to save the residents from their decadent ways and started restoration of the decaying 13^th century gothic abbey, built over the ancient one.

We noted street signs were in both English and Gaelic.

In the cemetery we tried to find MacBeth’s tombstone. But all we found was very very old stones that little lettering remained. Supposedly 43 kings and queens are buried here but we unable to identify any of the them.

I hate to admit this, but I didn’t know MacBeth was a real person, never mind a king. I always thought he was the figment of Shakespeare’s imagination.

Walking through the cloisters was so peaceful. Hanging baskets of flowers hung in each archway all around the court. What a great place to run away to if all one wanted was peace and quiet.

SCOTLAND'S POET

                                     Plus Scottish Food

The Robert Burns site is at the end of a lovely picturesque village. Burns, Scotland’s poet, died at age 37 in 1759. I read from the signs that the home is thatched with rhy because it is more durable than either oat or barley. Burns was an unsuccessful farmer. With only a couple years of tutoring. And formal limited schooling  he read everything he could get his hands on and by the age of thirteen spoke English, French and Latin. He liked the ladies as well as a drink and was known to have had seven illegitimate children. The grounds to the site contained lovely gardens. A stack yard was demonstrated at the end of the house yard.

Leaving the site we stopped at Brigadoon for a photo op. Remember brig means bridge, so this was a picturesque medieval stone bridge over the River Doon.

Watery overcooked vegetables and boiled meats are thankfully past history. In the last 3-4 decades there has been a significant improvement in Scottish cookery. The country’s culinary strength comes from its fresh raw ingredients ranging from seafood, beef, game, vegetables and native fruits. Game and fish play an important role in the Scottish diet.  Well known are the Aberdeen Angus beef, Highland venison, Loch Fyne seafood, and Ayrshire cheese.

          Both salmon and lamb were frequently on the menu. A typical Scottish breakfast includes large fresh buns called baps instead of toast. Porridge (oatmeal) is always included and is never lumpy, served piping hot and never with sugar, but a bit of milk is permissible. Scotland is well known for its good oats. Eggs, usually poached, sausage, but never haggis, bannocks, (oat griddle pancakes), broiled tomato, and baked beans are also part of the breakfast meal. Most often the hotels offered a variety of cheese, cold cuts, and pastries for those desiring continental breakfast fare.

Scots eat their main meal at noon and supper in the evening.  Cowdie is cottage cheese and double cream, cock-a-leekie is a soup made with chicken and leeks. Black pudding contains pigs’ blood and pork fat, and I just couldn’t quite get up the courage to try it. Neeps are mashed turnips, while tatties are potatoes, and they are often mashed together and served as a single dish. Partan bree is a rich crab soup. Scottish shortbread is world famous. Although coffee was always offered to us, tea is favored over coffee and is served after a meal. It is nearly impossible to get coffee served with a meal.

        

        Scots will tell you the only way to brew tea is to pour boiling water into a warm teapot where teabags or loose tea is waiting. After it steeps it is poured into cups. If one adds milk to the tea, the milk is added to the cup before the tea is poured. We noted there was always warm milk in a pitcher on the table.

SOME SCOTTISH TRIVIA

                                                Fun Tid Bits

v  The thistle has been the symbol of the country for 500 years. Legend has it that sleeping Scots were awakened by invading Vikings when they cried out after stepping on thistles in their bare feet. The Scots won the battle and the guardian thistle made it into history.

v  Language originally was Celtic based with some Gaelic and a smattering of Norse dialects.  By 1980 less than two percent of the population understood Gaelic. Gaelic is most popular on the Isle of Sky where 60% of the population speak the language. Accents and dialects have not developed in Scotland as they have in England.

v  The Highland games started more than 1000 years ago. Bagpipe playing and dancing are always part of the games.

v  After a wet harvest centuries ago, finding a way to use rain soaked barley resulted in the national whisky known as scotch. Scotch is the whisky, not the name of the people who inhabit the country. They are Scots, and the adjective is Scottish.

v  Big Bertha, a huge shipbuilding crane, is now a monument to the vast and prosperous ship-building industry that made the city of Glasgow famous. The last ship built on the Clyde was the Q E 2 in 1962. During W W II a warship a day rolled off the rails into the River Clyde. The 24-hour a day operation was incredible when 2000 ships hit the seas in a six year period. Before the war most of the ships built were passenger ships including all of the Cunard line ships. At one point the shipbuilding industry employed over 200,000 people. The ships were not only built here, but fully outfitted here as well. To say something is Clyde built means that it is quality and built to last. The River Clyde is but 78 miles long and has as much as a 20-foot tide here in the city.

v  In Dornoch. we visited the 1239 Presbyterian Church where a couple of elderly docents told us this was where Madonna had her son christened and that Prince Charles also had visited the church. The ladies proudly told us that the hotel across the street was once the home of Andrew Carnegie,

        They forgot to tell us that Dornoch is the area where the last witch burning in Scotland took    place in 1722. An old woman was accused of turning her daughter into a pony and riding it around town. She was sentenced to be burned alive in a pot of boiling tar.

v  All the museums in Glasgow are free.

SOME ENGLISH TRIVIA

                                           Fun Facts

        Since the  English drive on the left side of the road, they enter a round-about to the left, which seemed strange indeed!

               Birmingham is known as the city of 1000 trades, as there were no trade guilds in the city. The trade guilds always have been, and still are, very strictly controlled.

          
  One evening we went to the local church and climbed up into the bell tower for the weekly bell ringing. It is a very involved and precise activity. The six men and women were playing tunes on the bells, and being pretty much tone deaf, I have to admit I didn’t hear much difference in the sounds. It is quite a knack to get the bells upright, where they stay until finished, and then they are lowered over a period of time. Once upright they swing and their weight turns them around in a 360-degree range. The whole process is much more complicated than I ever thought.

          
  Mr. Fortnum of the Fortnum and Mason department store was the butler to Queen Anne in the 1700s. As such, he was given the used candles. A candle was only lit once, even if it burned only for seconds. He collected these used candles, sold them, and made enough money to leave the Queen’s service and to go into business with Mr. Mason.

            A yeoman farmer is one who owns his farm vs. a tenant farmer who rents his plot of land.

            All bus and truck drivers in England, by law, are required to stop for a 45-minute rest every 4-½ hours. They are limited to driving NO more than 9 hours a day.

            I’ve previously explained ceiling bosses. Well, a carble head is the decorative part at the end of a column or curved piece in a structure. They often are concrete and appear carved with a figure of a head or a floral motif.

            It was light a little after 4:00AM each day, and stayed light until nearly 10:00PM.

          
  I had to put up with duvets at two of the hotels. I still dislike them, and am much happier with blankets.

            China clay is quarried, but only a small amount of it is sent to the china industry. It is the paper industry that has a big demand for it, as it is the substance that makes paper shiny for all those colored ads.

            A Lemon Shanty is a drink that is half beer and half lemonade.