I didn’t know this until today but the Scottish Highlands has nothing to do with elevation and everything to do with culture, heritage and language. It covers the northern and northwestern regions of Scotland. The famous Clans of Scotland are strictly in the Highlands. In the old days, Highlanders tended to align with the Irish while Lowlanders aligned with the English. As a result, Lowlanders felt the Highlanders to be rather barbaric.
Regardless of the elevation, the drive from Ballater to Inverness was beautiful. Unfortunately, there weren’t places to pull over to take a photo but think about the golf course photos from yesterday’s blog. It looked a lot like that. I did manage to get a couple of close up pics of heather. From a distance it looks rather brown but close up it’s a pretty purple.
Because of the narrow, windy road, not to mention a road closure that necessitated going about 20 minutes out of our way, it took almost two hours to get from the resort to our first stop….Cawdor (pronounced Cowder) Castle. While the oldest part of the Castle is reportedly the Tower House built in 1454, historians have dated some of the stone to be from 1380.
A cool part of this Castle is that it was built around a small living holly tree. Tradition states that a donkey, laden with gold, lay down to rest under this tree, which was then selected as the site of the castle. The remains of the tree can still be seen in the lowest level of the tower.
The Castle was originally owned by the Cawdor family but in the 1510 was passed to the Campbell family when a Campbell married the Cawdor heiress. It still belongs to the Campbell family and is home to the Dowager Countess Cawdor, the stepmother to the current Earl.
After leaving the castle, it was a short 15-minute drive to our next stop – The Culloden (pronounced, Co-LOW-den, accent on second syllable) Battlefield. This is where the last battle of the 1745 Jacobite Uprising was held. Long story short, Bonny Prince Charles (son of exiled Stuart King James II) wanted to get the throne back for his father. His 3rd cousin, Duke of Cumberland the son of the current monarch George II, wanted his dad to keep the throne. The final battle of this 9-month war occurred on 16 April 1746 at Culloden. It lasted all of 40 minutes and it didn’t turn out well for Charlie’s army which lost over 2500 guys during that time. George stayed on the throne.
Interesting note, this war wasn’t England against Scotland, it was the Stuarts against the Hanovers for control of the throne. The Government Army had 4 battalions of Scotsmen, while the Jacobites included English recruits.
Our final stop before arriving in Inverness was the Clava Cairns. This is a group of three Bronze Age (about 2000BC) cairns or tombs.
We got to Inverness at about 3pm so decided to check out the Cathedral before going to dinner. The Cathedral is also known as the Cathedral Church of St. Andrew and was built in the 1860s, which makes it a new church compared to all the others we’ve seen.
We had an early dinner at Zizzi a chain Italian restaurant that we hadn’t tried yet. We had our usual, Margherita pizza for me and Lasagna for Peter. But this time there was a big surprise….lasagna noodles in the lasagna!
We’re settled into our new flat and are both pretty tired, so we may make it an early evening. Tomorrow Peter gets to hunt for Nessie at Loch Ness. Wish him luck.
First of all………….you have no idea how happy I am to see that Peter is eating a lasagna that actually has lasagna noodles in it!!!!
Secondly……I certainly hope you took some of those copper pots from that kitchen for me!!! That was a very large and those pots were gorgeous. Yes, I find pots gorgeous! LOL
Copper pots?!? Ooooookay….I’m learning new and weird things about you every day. here’s probably a support group for that. As for the lasagna, I knew you’d be thrilled. I actually mentioned to the hostess about the noodles and her response was, “why do they call it lasagna if there are no noodles?” So there you go.