Squishy and Squeaky See Scotland
Edinburgh + Oban
I met mom at Gatwick. Within 5 minutes she was telling me to stand up straight and stop playing with my hair, guess she had to make up for the last 10 months. We flew up to Edinburgh, walked along Prince's Street, past the Elephant House and the Greyfriars Bobby statue to our hostel on Grassmarket. After an early night, we walked up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle. It was pouring rain and I had definitely been overly optimistic in my packing choices, but luckily most of the stuff to see was indoors. The castle is on such a tall, rocky hill, you'd have to be proper motivated to even bother attacking, but apparently that's how Thomas Randolph's men did it, climbing the north face and scaling the walls. The castle is insanely defensible, which is why once Robert the Bruce captured it from the English in 1314, he had it blown up so they couldn't take it back from him since he didn't have the men to defend it. This does start to become a trend with Scottish castles. Because of this, the oldest part of the castle is St. Margret's chapel, and the rest is all 16th century or later. We got to see the honours of Scotland, the oldest set of crown jewels in the British isles. While other honours had been sought out and destroyed during the Interregnum, Oliver Cromwell never got his hands on these as they were smuggled from castle to castle. The rest of the castle holds the remains of a tower, artillery batteries, war museums and memorials and the great hall with a few reenacters wandering around. Best part was the gift shop had a free whiskey tasting, we bought a few bottles as gifts but I'll be surprised if they are actually delivered.
Down the Royal Mile we walked through the Tartan museum, past Holyrood and had a quick dinner before heading to the ghost tour. Now on the way, I managed to step or stand in pretty much every puddle in the city, that combined with mom's insanely squeaky shoes, meant it would be impossible for us to sneak up on anyone.
The ghost tour was cool. It started with the grisly and gross historical background of the Edinburgh witches, the plague and the utter lack of basic sanitation in the city. Then we moved underground, into the abandoned rooms that had been built between the supports of a bridge over it and had been used as workshops, housing, cellars and secret meeting places for criminals until being walled up and left. The dark, stone rooms, lit by only the guide's candle, were the perfect place for ghost stories. Her voice echoed through the rooms as she told us of the experiences different groups and guides had had in the tunnels in which we now stood. The young boy that would sometimes grab the hands of the last member in the group, trying to come to the surface, the top-hatted gentleman who stood in the doorway of the tavern room, and the malevolent presence, The Watcher. Apparently, he's territorial and people have heard threatening voices, felt cold hands strangling them, and found bruises and scratches upon their return to the surface. Our trip was disappointingly uneventful but the atmosphere of the place really got you going.
Saturday, we picked up our car rental, the guy talked us into an upgrade - Mercedes Benz E class with GPS, and thank goodness for that otherwise we'd have been lost in the highlands somewhere, never to be heard from again. Mom learning to drive on the left and dealing with roundabouts was a whole new level of terror, she called it revenge for having to drive with me, but there's no way I hit the curb 3 times in the space of a few hours.
We drove up to Stirling Castle, which while the main defences were under reconstruction, was still beautiful, and a lot less crowded than Edinburgh had been. Mom kept getting all the James and Marys mixed up but fortunately, we'd covered this era quite extensively in my Renaissance history class, and it was fun seeing that come in handy. The Great Hall reminded me a lot of Hampton Court, built in the same era and with the same need to impress anyone who walked in. They had recreated the bedrooms and council chambers that James IV had built for Mary of Guise, and had the room where Mary Queen of Scots had given birth to James VI/ I. One blog I read about the castle claimed that she found it too 'Disneyfied,' however people don't realize that medieval castles were very bright and colourful places, almost gaudy in some opinions. A few years ago, the castle started an amazing project, recreating a series of tapestries called 'The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn.' The originals hang in a museum in New York, but the beautifully vibrant works of art that modern artists, using traditional methods, had crafted, hang on the walls for which they were intended. I stood in that room for a good long while, talking to the reenacter there, and she told me that the story was used as an analogy for the Passion of Christ, the pure creature, hunted and killed, and then coming back to life in a garden of perfection. Also, as the unicorn is the symbol of Scotland, it holds a nationalistic allegory as well. Typically, tapestries we see are greatly faded, giving them a pale blue look since red and yellows fade first, but seeing them in all their splendor was definetly a trip highlight for me.
The next castle on the list was Doune Castle, probably not a name people recognize but anyone who has seen Monty Python's Holy Grail would find it familiar. The audioguide started with the theme song, and was narrated by Terry Jones, who talked about the actual history of the place as well as details about the movie. The castle was mainly used as the residence of Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany, who was the Regent of Scotland from 1388 until his death. The castle was pretty much left alone, managed to not be blown up during the Jacobite revolution and the Victorians didn't mess it up, so it's used in a lot of movies and shows, like Outlander and Game of Thrones. They used the one castle for all the castles in the Holy Grail, the Camelot song, the insulting French soldiers, Castle Anthrax and Swamp Castle including getting tourist visitors to be extras in the Lancelot-kills-everyone-at-the-wedding scene. It's the only castle I've been to that sells coconuts in the gift shop.
We kept driving west, along Loch Lomond, while listening to the appropriate song. Stopped at Dumbarton Castle, a few fortresses left on a hill, before driving down to Oban. I got to enjoy the amazing countryside, the vibrant green in the golden sunlight, while mom had a death grip on the steering wheel, probably put claw marks in it. We got to our B&B in Oban, a harbour city that's really cute, had awesome clam chowder and went to bed.
