2022_08/09 Scotland and Northern England – Page 2

Around the Isle

Today’s weather was better than forecasted with sunny skies in the morning and a few clouds in the afternoon, so it was a great day for our drive around the Isle of Skye. Here’s our route, starting from our B&B (Rasa Sayang) in Kyle of Lochalish just the mainland side of the Skye Bridge. It took exactly 4 hours for the drive but because we had lots of stops it didn’t seem that long.

The first thing we saw was at Sligachan with its famous bridge.

The Collie and Mackenzie Statue at Sligachan which pays tribute to the two renowned mountaineering figures who created many of the routes across the mountains on the Isle.

About 45 minutes later, we arrived at our castle de jour, Dunvegan Castle. It is is the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland and has been the ancestral home of the Chiefs of Clan MacLeod for 800 years.

While we’ve seen things like this in other castles, this one continues to the present day with the current Chief of the Clan. It’s starting to run out of room. Wonder what they’re going to do after the next few Chiefs?

The castle was first built in the 13th century and, like many others, was added on to piecemeal over the years.

While certainly not small, this castle was one that I could actually picture living in. It had a homey feel and wasn’t over the top in its decorations. The current Chief of the Clan, Hugh MacLeod, lives in apartments on the top floor.

Letter written by Sir Walter Scott after a visit to the castle in 1815.

Cozy corner of the main bedroom which was large but not crazy big.

The Chief of the Clan used the dining room for special occasions (e.g. Christmas and New Year) or when hosting larger parties.

The Ferry Flag hanging in the Drawing Room is one of the Clan’s most prized possessions.

The flag was brought back by a MacLeod from the Holy Land when he returned from the Crusades and is said to have special powers. Here is a link to the story of the Fairy Flag. https://www.scotclans.com/pages/the-fairy-flag-of-dunvegan

The North Room was filled with memorabilia, including another one of the castle’s prized possessions. The Dunvegan Cup is made of wood with silver plates and dates to 1493.

There was also a dungeon. It was small and at least 10 feet underground. No way I want to spend 5 minutes down there.

The Great Sword of Dunvegan is one of only 3 surviving Scottish medieval claymores (two-handed sword).

View from the back of the Castle. It was a beautiful morning.

Once finished in this fascinating castle, we headed out to the gardens. We only visited a couple of the many gardens in the 42,000 acre estate.

The thistle is the national flower of Scotland. If you remember from one of the posts from Edinburgh, the Order of the Thistle is the greatest order of chivalry in Scotland.

After Dunvegan, we headed to the Fairy Glen which is a number of conical hills that look man-made but are the remnants of an ancient landslip. It almost looked like the hills were covered in moss.

Starting up the hill to get a better view. It was a slippery, dirt path so Peter didn’t even attempt it. The full walk to the glen was 30 minutes but I only walked a few minutes as I didn’t want to leave my honey alone for over an hour.

Next up was The Quiraing. The road between these two sites was one of those one lane with pull off roads that Peter hates. We only had a couple of problems when cars were coming way to fast and we had to make emergency pull offs. My honey was pretty white knuckled after those but we made it without any major problems.

We only saw one part of the Quiraing as well as this walk was even further than Fairy Glen, 2 hours round trip at a moderate pace. Since our pace is anything but moderate, it would have taken forever. So we took a few pics from the overlook and moved on.

Then it was on to Kilt Rock. Its name comes from the ripple on the rocks that resembles a folded kilt. There was no walking this time, just a short trip from the car park to the overlook.

Kilt Rock and Mealt Waterfall from the overlook.

Our final stop was Old Man of Storr but for this one we didn’t get further than the car park. We had seen it from the distance during the drive, but once we got there we realized there was a steep walk of over an hour to get to the rocks. It should come as no surprise that we didn’t even get out of the car.

Our final stop of the day was Portree, the largest village on the Isle. By this time it was after 3pm and we hadn’t yet had lunch so we were starving. Most of the restaurants had stopped serving lunch but weren’t serving dinner until 5pm but we found one diner that served all day. After a lovely beef burger dinner, we headed back to our B&B for a relaxing evening.

Tomorrow we have our longest drive yet, 4 1/2 hours. But we have several stops to make so hopefully it will go as fast as today’s drive went. As always, thanks for traveling with us on our adventures.

First Look at Isle of Skye

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. The temp was in the low 70s and the sun was shining. Unfortunately tomorrow is supposed to be cloudy and rainy again so that made today even more special.

The first stop today was Eilean Donan (pronounced Ail-en Do-nan) which is the most photographed castle in all of Scotland and was the site of the Scottish HQ of MI6 in several James Bond movies. Not being a James Bond movie fan I wouldn’t know but maybe some of you recognize it.

It’s on an island and is accessed by a short bridge. The name comes from the Gaelic word for island (Eilean) and Donnan of Eigg, a Scottish saint who was martyred in 617. So the name really means Island of Donnan.

The original castle was built in the 13th century and became a stronghold for the powerful Clan Mackenzie and its ally, Clan Macrae. In response to the Mackenzie support of the Jacobite rebellion, the castle was destroyed in 1719. The current castle is a 20th century reconstruction of the old castle. It is still privately owned but the family no longer lives there.

We chose not to go into the castle as there are 100 steep stairs on the self-guided tour and we just didn’t feel up to dealing with them today. Since we’ve seen so many castles in the last few weeks, we don’t feel like we could have missed too much.

The castle was surrounded by a beautiful marsh, some of which you can see in this video.

In case you don’t feel like watching the video, here are a few pics.

After having our lunch at the castle, we drove another 40 minutes to the Torabhaig Distillery on the Isle of Skye. We tried several times to go on a distillery tour but could never get in so we’re glad we were able to do this one.

We’ve been to lots of wine and beer places but this is the first time we’ve toured a whiskey distillery and it was very interesting. It’s only a 3 step process but then the whiskey must age at least 3 years and 1 day. Longer is better but that’s the minimum.

Courtyard where we waited for the tour to start.

At the end of the tour it was time for the tasting. I don’t like Scotch whiskey but didn’t want to be rude so I gave it a try. It was horrible. I mean even worse than other Scotch whiskey I’ve tasted. It was very smokey, which is their thing, but it tasted like I had put a piece of burnt firewood in my mouth. The guide said to try adding a few drops of water to dilute the smokey taste. Well, my thought was unless the water turned it into a Pina Colada, I’d take a pass. Peter tried it with water and said it didn’t help much. Even though we didn’t like the product, it was still fun to see how it was made.

After the tour we headed back off the island to just the other side of the bridge where we’re staying at a B&B for the next 2 nights. This is a first for us as we’ve always either stayed in an Airbnb flat or a hotel. But, we couldn’t find anything either on or close to the island that was reasonably priced so we decided to try something different. Rasa Sayang has a 9.5 (out of 10) rating on booking.com and the photos looked nice so we booked it. When Gracie was leading us here, we thought she’d gone bonkers again but when she said “You have arrived” my first thought was, arrived where??? This is where we were at the time.

But when we drove about 50 feet farther down the road, we found this on the opposite side of the street.

Our host, Joan, said that when they bought the house it they could see the bay but then a few years later the government built the military base right across the street. So, the view isn’t much but the home is lovely and our room is very nice.

The town of Kyle of Lochalsh is very tiny and doesn’t have a restaurant, so we went back across the bridge to the Isle of Skye to eat at a place called The Moils Restaurant. The food was very good but the view was spectacular.

The Isle of Skye bridge from the picnic table where we had dinner.

Tomorrow we’re off to explore the Isle of Skye in more detail, stopping to see some of its most famous sights. It’s a beautiful island so we’re looking forward to the day.

Anniversary Dinner

It’s only 8:30pm and I’m trying to stay awake for a little while longer so I thought I’d tell you about our amazing anniversary dinner. At our host’s suggestion we ate at Contrast Brasserie, a Pan-Asian (what does that even mean??) restaurant about a 10-minute walk from the flat.

Enjoying a pre-dinner glass of Martini and Rossi Asti which is my favorite.

In spite of all the rain today, the weather cleared up enough for us to walk to dinner, which is great because we had less than 4000 steps today. On our way we passed a pretty church and some statues dedicated to Faith, Hope and Charity.

At the restaurant, they gave us a complimentary glass of Prosecco as a anniversary gift, which I wish we would have gotten before we ordered an entire bottle of Prosecco.

Enjoying our complimentary glass of Prosecco.

We both ordered the Rib Eye with King Prawns which was absolutely delicious.

Since this was an Asian restaurant, the veggies were served tempura style and they were very good.

After a delicious dinner, we walked home along the River Ness. By this time the sun was setting and it was beautiful.

The Inverness Cathedral with the bridge in the background.

All in all, it was a wonderful anniversary. Here’s hoping for many more.

Happy Anniversary to Us

It’s hard to believe but Peter and I have been married 7 years today. Considering I got married for the first time at age 60, who knew that we could pull this off. Given the potentially disastrous fall Peter had just over a week ago, we consider ourselves very blessed to celebrate the day together.

We started our special day with a nice breakfast and, of course, mimosas.

After breakfast we headed about an hour north to Dunrobin Castle. As with most of these ancient castles, it started as a Keep (1401) and was continually built on by subsequent generations. The part of the castle we saw was primarily from the mid-1800s.

Unlike the other Castles, this one had parking directly in front so getting a “clean” picture was pretty much impossible.

We arrived just after 4 coaches of tours arrived so the number of people to see the castle was ridiculous. One of the stewards told us that they would be leaving in about 45 minutes to see the falconry demonstration and the castle would empty out nicely at the time. Since we’ve seen things like that before and weren’t interested in standing in the rain to see it again, we went to the café for a mid-morning snack to wait them out.

I had delicious hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows while Peter had coffee Americano. For our snack Peter had a tea cake (foreground) which is basically a cold S’more of grahm cracker bottom, topped with marshmallow and covered in chocolate. I had the chocolate and coconut flapjack which is an oat bar covered in chocolate and coconut. It’s a traditional Scottish snack.

This gorgeous silver mantle clock was hanging in the café’s Firehouse Room.

Guess this is why the room was named Firehouse Room.

Painting says this was the first Lord Sutherland but gave the date of the 1800. But, the Earldom (in Scotland Dukes are also called Earls…very confusing) in the 1200s so it’s a little confusing as well.

While the ceilings in this Castle aren’t as ornate as many of the others, these carvings on the ceiling in the Drawing Room were remarkable.

And the other corner. This was one of two grand pianos in the Castle.

Handkerchief left by Queen Victoria after a visit in 1872. Don’t you just hate it when guests leave their stuff behind!

Nanny’s room. She would stay here with the youngest kids.

Seamstress Room. This is also called the Haunted Room. In the 15th century, the Duke captured a beautiful young girl from the Mackay Clan and wanted to marry her. She said no and tried to escape from this room by climbing out of the window with bedsheets tied together. The Duke came and and, in his anger, he cut the sheets with his sword. Of course she fell to her death so now she haunts this room. The Coronation Room and Cornet in the back was worn to coronations in both 1937 and 1952.

This is in the oldest part of the Castle…early 15th century.

Formal gardens on the shores of the North Sea.

As you can tell from the pictures, it was a cloudy, rainy day. But, since we’ve been in the UK exactly 6 weeks today and this was our first real rainy day, we’re not complaining. The weather has been absolutely amazing so it was no big deal to skip the walk through the formal gardens. It’s not like we hadn’t already seen gardens.

Tomorrow we leave Inverness and head southwest towards the Isle of Skye where we’ll see another castle (seriously, how many are there??) and go for a tour of a whisky distillery. We’ve been trying to do that since we got to Scotland and haven’t been able to get in. Hopefully it will be worth the wait. We’ll let you know.

Loch Ness

Tomorrow we’ll start week 7 of our Epic Adventure and, luckily, we’re out in the country with less to do. There’s no way we could have kept up with the pace we had in the larger cities and we’re enjoying quieter days. Today we started with a 20-minute drive to Urquhart (pronounced er-cot; I know….why so many letters?) Castle, a ruin which dates from the 13th to 16th centuries.

The Castle was originally held by Clan MacDonald but then, because of their ruffian ways, the King took it away from them and gave it to Clan Grant. Over the next 200 years, the Castle was raided by the powerful MacDonald Clan including the Great Raid of 1545. They ran off with a ton of stuff.

As the sign says, this was part of the MacDonald’s take-away menu.

I wouldn’t want to be a prisoner in there. The cell was very narrow and dark.

Early in the Jacobite Uprising when King James was first exiled, Clan Grant was on the side of the government and garrisoned the Castle with 200 of its own men but not a lot of weapons. The Jacobites laid siege to the Castle and, while Clan Grant was able to hold out until the end of that part of the war (remember the war went on for over 60 years; this was before Bonnie Prince Charlie). But to prevent the Castle from ever being lost to the Jacobites, Clan Grant blew the place up. In 1715, a bad storm took the rest of the Castle down and what we saw today is what’s left.

After touring the Castle we had our picnic lunch while we waited for our 1-hour cruise on Loch Ness. As you can see from the pictures, it was a dreary day but not as cold as it looks…probably around 60 degrees. But, it got a lot colder on the boat as we headed into the wind. The cruise went south down the Loch until we reached the Castle, then turned back around.

On the cruise wearing our brand new tartan scarfs. Peter’s is Clan MacLean of Duart and mine is the dress tartan from Clan Campbell (the Clan that still owns the Cawdor Castle we saw yesterday).

Peter was pretty disappointed not to see Nessie, but he consoled himself by touching the water of the Loch. It was very cold.

After the cruise and the ceremonial touching of the water, we celebrated with delicious gelato then headed home for the afternoon. It was a wonderful day. Tomorrow we head north about 60 minutes to the Dunrobin Castle. It looks beautiful in the pictures so we’re excited to see it.

Drive Through the Scottish Highlands

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.

The heather has absolutely no scent to it at all. Yesterday we were told that the scent can only be smelled when it rains and the heather gets wet.

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.

The rest of the house was built around the Tower House.

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.

Remains of the holly tree. Testing has shown that the tree died in 1372 which lends credence to the Tower House being built earlier than first thought.

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.

Almost every wall had a beautiful tapestry.

There’s way too much pink in this bedroom to suit me.

A very pretty corner in the, wait, you guessed it….Yellow Room.

And this is the kitchen used by the Dowager Countess of Cawdor. Cynthia….it has your microwave!

Looking at the Castle from the side. It looks quite long from this perspective.

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.

There’s not much there but an open field but because of the bloody battle that occurred here, it’s considered sacred ground.

The red flag in the distance indicates where the Government’s army held the line.

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.

One of the many markers that indicates a mass grave where the Jacobites were buried. Even though the stone says that this is the grave of the Stewart Clan, everyone was buried together regardless of Clan affiliation.

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!

As many times as Peter has had lasagna in the last almost 6 weeks, this is the first time he’s had a piece that had noodles in it. I had a taste and it was very yummy.

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.

Relaxing Day in Braemar

Today was a wonderfully relaxing day beginning with lazing around the townhouse until after 10AM. We had no place special to be so we decided to take our time getting going. The day started cold, only about 39 degrees, but quickly started warming up and the sun started shining. After breakfast I went for a short walk to explore the grounds. This is a beautiful resort.

A little after 10 we decided to head west a few miles to the Royal Lochnagar Distillery for a tour of how they make their single malt Scotch Whiskey, but they were sold out for the entire day. It wasn’t a totally wasted trip because on our way we drove past the gate to Balmoral Castle, the Queen’s residence. As I mentioned yesterday, since she is in the Castle it is closed to tours. The Castle is set back too far to see from the road but it was still cool to see the gates and know she was just down the street.

Royal Lochnagar Distillery has been around since the 1850s when Queen Victoria visited from nearby Balmoral Castle (only about a mile away) and gave it a Royal Warrant, which means it is a place of business that provides services or goods to the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and/or the Prince of Wales. It’s a really big deal here.

So, we headed another 20 minutes west to the Braemar (pronounced Bray-mar; with the accent on the last syllable) Golf Club. I tried to get a tee time at a different club but, while they had open times, they didn’t have a buggy for us to use while we played. This Club was very gracious about us dropping by to play 9 holes and only requiring us to rent one set of golf clubs. Most Clubs require each golfer to have his/her own set of clubs but these guys were cool with Peter and I sharing.

Since we live in a desert, we’re used to a course that contains mostly rock and is as flat as a pancake. This course was just the opposite, very hilly and green. In fact, the Braemar Golf Club is the highest 9-hole golf course in Scotland. It was beautiful.

The River Dee runs through the entire region and empties into the North Sea to the east. It also runs through this golf course.

We crossed the River Dee on the hole #1. Luckily both of our shots made it over the river.

If you look closely at the mountain in the distance, you can see the heather on the hillside. There’s no fragrance to it unless it rains.

Look at the middle of the photo and you’ll see a stone retention wall. That’s where the tee box was on this hole. We had to hit from down to where I’m standing to take the picture which is where Peter’s ball landed. My shot went a little further, not as far as I thought, but it looked beautiful sailing through the air from the high tee box.

Bridge crossing over a little brook that branches off from the River. We lost a couple of balls in there.

After our 9 holes and buying a souvenir golf ball for my collection, we headed into the town of Braemar to find a picnic spot for our lunch. We found a bench in a spot right by the river and their War Memorial.

War Memorial dedicated to those lost in both world wars.

A propeller from a WWII plane that was shot down just out of town. The pilot was a local man who died in the crash. They turned the propeller from his plane into a memorial.

The clouds had just rolled in but within 10 minutes they were gone and it was sunny again.

Looking from the other side of the bridge. I think the stone building is someone’s house.

After walking around town for a few minutes, we headed back home. All in all, it was a wonderful day with beautiful weather. Tomorrow, we head out to Inverness, stopping at a few places along the way. But for now, we’re just relaxing in our townhouse doing another load of laundry. Have a great night everyone.

Aberdeen

I know this will come as a surprise to everyone but not everything on the internet is true! Can you believe it? Yesterday Google told me Balmoral Castle was open for visitors but it turns out it is not because the Queen is in residence. So we went to a different castle instead.

Crathes Castle is a 16th century castle about 40 minutes from here. It was built by the Burnett family and they held it for almost 400 years before giving it to the Scotland National Trust in 1951. Compared to what we saw yesterday at Glamis Castle, this place was tiny but it was still a nice place to visit.

The Second Kitchen. This was the kitchen used by the servants.

The First Kitchen. It looks more modern because it was refurbished when the Castle served as a convalescent home during WWI and WWII.

Originally this was a guard room, then used as a store room before being used as a dining room.

The thing this Castle is most known for is the painted ceilings. The next photo is of the High Hall which originally had the entire ceiling painted. Now the paintings are only found in a few of the corners.

Look in the upper left corner to see a bit of the painted ceilings.

This painting of the family crest was in one of the corners of the High Hall.

There were a couple of rooms with this type of painted ceiling. They were in great shape.

The Muse Room. In addition to the painted ceiling, you can see a little bit of the painted wall. They are still finding original (16th century) wall paintings. These have not been refinished so they are in great shape.

The long sword against the wall is a two-handed sword. It was too heavy to raise over the head so the soldier used it as a decapitation sword.

In this last picture you can see a little bit of the stone spiral staircase. Peter made it up a couple of stories of regular stairs and one level of the stone stairs but the next couple of levels were way too steep and didn’t have a rail. Because the tour was a one-way “road” we found a steward to take us on a roundabout that eliminated the need to climb higher before going back down. Unfortunately we still had about 60 of these very steep stone stairs to get down. I walked in front of Peter and the steward walked behind him as he very slowly made his way to the ground level. After Friday’s disaster, my stomach was in a knot the entire way and I was very glad to get back to the bottom. I think we’re done with stone stairways.

After seeing the house, we spent a little time in the garden. It was a relatively small area but had some beautiful flowers.

Scotland is much greener than the parts of England and Wales we visited. Because it’s so much further north, it’s cooler and gets more rain.

There were quite a few of these very large shaped bushes.

I have no idea what kind of flowers these are but I thought they were pretty.

After leaving the Castle, we headed another 30 minutes east to Aberdeen. It’s the 3rd most populous city in the country after Edinburgh and Glasgow. We had planned to see the Cathedral and a couple of other buildings in the city but I couldn’t find anyplace to park. I followed a couple of parking arrows but either ran into dead ends or construction. We finally gave up and headed to the beach instead.

If you remember, two weeks ago we were crazy hot. Well, that’s not a problem anymore as our temps have dropped by 45 degrees. When we got to the beach it was cloudy, windy and only about 50 degrees. We ate our picnic lunch at the beach and then Peter had his ceremonial touching a new body of water. Instead of wading in, which he usually likes to do, he just touched it. It was way too cold to get wet.

Here’s the video but it’s weird because for some reason, I was holding the phone in portrait view rather than landscape. I have no idea what I was thinking but oh well. It’s less than 30 seconds long, though, so I guess that’s not too bad.

Then we headed home to our townhouse in Ballater. It’s a nice lodge but, unfortunately, has a set of curved stairs. We’re both pretty paranoid so Peter limits his trips up and down. Fortunately, the bathroom is on the ground floor along with the bedroom which is great. The living room, kitchen and large balcony are upstairs.

Dining area with the stairs just behind. You can see the baby gate that can be used if a family has little kids.

Living room with balcony overlooking the wooded area.

Enjoying a glass of wine on our balcony after our day trip to Aberdeen. The sun actually came out for a couple of hours late in the afternoon. The swelling in Peter’s face has come down nicely. He’s still pretty banged up but he doesn’t look quite as scary as he did a few days ago.

Tomorrow we’re going to stay a little closer to home to give me a break from driving. We were in the car for 3 hours today and have over 2 hours on Friday when we move up to Inverness. If the weather is good we may play golf or we might visit a distillery. After dinner tonight we went to the beautiful indoor pool and hot tub so we may do that again tomorrow. We’ll see what the day holds. Good night everyone.

Another Day, Another Castle

We left our lovely flat in St. Andrews and headed north about 20 minutes to Dundee. There we visited the RSS (Royal Research Ship) Discovery. This was the ship that Captain Robert Smith took to his first trip to Antarctica in 1901. It was later used as a cargo ship and in WWI as a supply ship.

Officers and scientists had single bunk cabins along the perimeter of the wardroom.

This kitchen served 49 officers and men. Since it was the warmest spot on the ship, the sick bay was located next door.

One of the exhibitions showing work done in Antarctica.

After spending a couple of hours on the ship and in the museum, we headed another 20 minutes north to Glamis (pronounced Glahms) Castle. It wasn’t until we started reading about it on the posterboards that we realized there was a Royal connection to the Castle. It was the childhood home of Elizabeth Bowes Lyons, more commonly referred to as HRH Queen Mother, the current Queen’s mother. The Queen’s younger sister, Margaret, was born in the Castle. The 19th Earl of Strathmore (Simon Bowes-Lyon) is the Queen’s 2nd cousin twice removed. He’s 36 and single. He has two brothers, both of whom are single. I wonder who’s next in line if none of the boys step up to the plate and have kids?

Beautiful corner front door and clock tower.

Glamis Castle has been the home of the Lyons family since the 14th century but it started as a hunting lodge in the mid 11th century.

The lower part of the Castle was from the early medieval days.

Also from the early day. The rooms upstairs were much more homey.

Thought this was a cool picture. This was taken at the Queen’s maternal grandparents 50th wedding anniversary celebration in 1931. Princess Elizabeth holding a stuffed toy is in the front row, 6th from the left. Her mother is in the 2nd row 4th from the left holding baby Margaret. Duke of York (Elizabeth’s father) is back row 5th from left.

The silver boat was given to the 14th Earl and Countess by their kids at the celebration of the 50th wedding anniversary.

One of the tapestries from the 16th century.

One of the many beautiful stained glass windows. This one was in the Chapel.

This magnificent fireplace was in the Billiard Room.

Queen Mum’s drawing room. She used this room whenever she visited the Castle.

King and Queen’s bedroom with cradle on the side. This is the cradle the current Queen used to sleep in as a baby. How cool is that?!? The Queen Mum never used this bedroom again once her husband (King George VI) died in 1952.

Robes worn by the 13th Earl and Countess at the coronation of Edward VII in 1902. These were the same robes worn by the 14th Earl and Countess when their daughter (Queen Mum) was crowned Queen in 1936.

There was a small room dedicated to the Queen Mum, who is the family’s most famous member.

Invitation to the Queen Mum’s 100th birthday service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2000.

Elizabeth in her later years. She lived to be 102 years old and died just a few months after her daughter, Margaret.

Just a few of the over 13,000 acres at the estate.

Back of the Castle. We had our picnic lunch at the picnic table on the left.

We were so glad we found this Castle to visit. It was almost by accident as I was just looking for someplace to kill time as we couldn’t check into our next lodging until after 3pm. This was on the way so we thought we’d stop. What a great find!

For the next 3 nights we’re staying at one of the Hilton Grand Vacation resorts in Ballater which was about a 90-minute drive from Glamis Castle. It’s a beautiful resort in a wooded area. It’s very secluded and quiet. We should have a nice few days here. We’ll let you know how it goes.

More Than Just Golf

In spite of what you might think based on the last two posts, there is more to St. Andrews than golf. Of course, there is St. Andrews University, the 3rd oldest university in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge. Like the others, the University of St. Andrews is spread out through a fairly large section of the city. We only walked down one street of the main part of the university but there were some beautiful old buildings.

We had a relaxing morning before heading to the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral. It was only about a 20-minute walk but, unfortunately, we got caught in a little bit of rain. It didn’t rain hard but we still got a little wet. Of course, since weather said no chance of rain, the umbrellas were still in the flat. The rain only lasted about 10 minutes, though, so it wasn’t too bad.

On our way to the Cathedral we passed the ruins of the Blackfriars Chapel which is all that remains of the Dominican Friary of St. Andrews. It was a Catholic Friary that was destroyed during the Protestant Reformation in the mid-16th century.

The Cathedral of St. Andrews was built in 1158 and was the center of medieval Catholic Church in Scotland. During the Reformation, the Catholic Church was outlawed and the Cathedral fell into disuse. BTW, contrary to what many people think, the Church of Scotland is not Catholic, it’s Presbyterian. Who knew??

By the size of the ruins, experts believe that the Cathedral was 390 feet long, which makes it the largest church to have ever been built in Scotland.

There was also an old cemetery. While some of the graves were old, there were also some headstones that were relatively new with dates up to the 1940s.

This is the oldest headstone I could find, at least out of the stones I could read. There were many that looked older but the engraving had worn out. This one is from 1829…almost 200 years ago.

There was a Cathedral museum that had artifacts from the middle ages found during excavation of the site.

This was one of the oldest artifacts they found dating from 761.

Most of the slabs and headstones had skull and crossbones engraved on them.

The inscription on this slab fragment is still very clear. It’s the slab from the grave of Thomas Balfour (don’t think he’s anyone important, except of course, to his family) who died in 1582. The translation of the Latin is: Light of the city, illumination of the people, taking a large part in the court of the council and burgh, and example to the citizens, here I am buried.”

This is a model of what the Friars of the time would have looked like.

Part of the Cathedral, St. Rule’s Tower was built in the early 12th century to store the relics of St. Andrew.

A short walk from the Cathedral is St. Andrews Castle, another ruin. It was closed today but we were able to get some photos from the street. The Castle was from the late 12th century. It was destroyed and rebuilt many times during the Wars of Scottish Independence of the late 13th/early 14th centuries.

The Castle was positioned to protect the town from the sea.

Between the Castle and the Cathedral was a large marshy area.

There were a couple of women swimming this pool. We’re not sure the purpose of the pool but there was strong sulfur smell.

After seeing the ruins, we headed back to the town center, only about another 10-minute walk. After stopping at Superdrug to pick up more gauze pads (I brought quite a few with us but used them all on Peter’s face after he fell) we stopped for ice cream before heading home.

We had lunch at home and enjoyed a lazy afternoon. I napped for about an hour and Peter is still asleep, although I’m thinking about waking him up so he can sleep tonight.

Tomorrow we head north to Ballater where we’ll stay at a Hilton Garden Vacation Resort for the next 3 nights. On our way we have a few castles to visit. Should be fun.