Day 15, Wednesday, Septemeber 30 "Surgical Musuem and paths"

Happy Birthday Nana! Yesterday was the first day that it really rained since I've been in Scotland so I have brought settled weather with me, as they say. I got to test out my L.L. Bean rain coat and it works great. It comes down to my knees and has a easy hood so I stayed mostly dry though it rained on us the whole day. David spotted an interesting museum just a bit off the regular tourist path during his first 5 weeks here so we decided to visit yesterday.

The Surgeons Hall Musuem has several exhibits. The first chronicals the developement of medicine in Scotland. They had very intersting displays of surgical instruments from the 17 century forward and displays of anatomy specimens used in medical training. One very fasinating series was a group of bones with musket balls still in them so that we could see the damage done.

By the way, David kept dry by wearing his jacket, spiffy hat and an umbrella. They call them brawlys here but I just can't bring myself to adopt that one. Oh yes, yesterday was the first day I caught the bus by myself. David went up to New College to work in the morning and I caught the bus and meet him around 1:30 to go to the museum. We walked from New College to the museum (in the rain-no big deal here). But caught a #8 bus home rather than walking home (which is what we usually do)

Apparently there were so many students of anatomy that an underground industry of digging up corpes for dissection became rampant and the authorities finally put a stop to it by hanging the perpetrator and letting the doctors do a public disection of his body as punishment. They actually had a wallet that someone made out of his skin after the disection! Any way, photos weren't allowed so I can't show you anything. We ended the tour with a section of dentistry. Lets just say that I won't complain anymore about going to the dentist after seeing the instruments they used to pull teeth (without anesthesia) in the early days!

There is another intersting feature here in Scotland and that is walking/cycling paths. They are paved pathways, really nice and wide, and very well kept up, that people walk or bike on. These connect neighborhoods to each other and to shops, churches and schools. People walk on the regular streets of course, but these are very handy to use with no cars or buses to worry about.

Go up and out of our flat, turn left, and at the end of the street, you will pick up this walking path. This is the path that we take about 3 times a week to go and buy our groceries from a store called TESCO. It's probably about a 10 minute walk.

Here is David on the return trip. We put our groceries into a rolling back pack and my messanger bag which sits on top of the back pack. You can see why you go to the store several times a week because you can't carry more than that at one time. Another interesting thing they are staring to do here is charge you for bags. Not all stores do but we have been in two stores last week that charge 5 L for one shopping bag! (that's about $7.50). They are really pushing the "green thing".

For you antique fans...this is what is sitting outside our flat, discarded, up against a wall. It's a fire place surround and an iron window box. Many of the flats along this street have these flower boxes at their windows planted with geraniums etc. The fireplace surround obviously came out in a remodel. I wish there was some way to stick them in my suitcase and bring them back with me. I hate to see them rusting away. Can you imagine what they would cost in an antique store in the States?

AT 7:30 am tomorrow morning, we have a cab coming to take us to Waverly Starion. We have a 4 hour train ride into London. I am really excited since this is my first train ride since I was around 7 years old and we took a train to Atlanta. We will be in London tomorrow and Friday, Then on Saturday we take a train to the Cotswolds where we will stay in a flat that belongs to our colleague at HBU. It is in a manor house called Sherborne Manor. On Sunday we will go to Statford on Avon to see the home of Shakespear (just a 40 K drive). On Monday we will drive to Bath and spend the night. Tuesday we will spend more time in Bath and then drive to Stonehenge on our way back to Sherborne. Then on Wednesday we will visit Oxford (another 40 K drive). We plan to visit the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien hung out. (thanks for the suggestion Daniel). Then the following day we take a train back to Scotland. Depending on our access to internet, we hopefully will post some our our adventures from there. Until then, take care everyone.

Day 13, Monday, Septemeber 28 "The Castle"

Good morning, friends and family!Today was Castle day. The Edinburgh Castle is the place from which Scottish Kings and Queens reigned their county. It sits on top of a large volcanic rock that is 70 million years old and is the highest point in the city.

It is made up of about 20 separate buildings, some very large with many levels; some very small and private. It was built and rebuilt over many centuries. We took the #27 bus up to New College and walked up the last little (but extremely steep) way.

Here is the entrance to the Castle. On the left is a statue of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. On the right is William Wallace, the Scottish Freedom Fighter who was immortalized in the movie Brave Heart. In the center is David Capes, famous scholar (no, David is not writing the blog today! He is off working.)

At this site there were 4 different gates to serve as a defense. Today, 2 of them remain.

At the first level beyond the entrance, you find the first set of buildings and a row of cannons that over look the north wall. Behind David and the cannons, you can see a long row of buildings. These were the stables where all the horses and other animals at the castle were housed.

  Looking over the wall you see a great view of the city and the Firth of Forth ("firth" is like a bay). This is just the first level of the Castle grounds, but you can see how easy it would have been to defend it since it sits on a high point.

On this same level is a museum of more modern Scottish military activity. It is located in a building known as the Governor's House and New Barracks. The military still use this building today. That bagpipe guy was very cooperative in posing for pictures!

There is a very interesting custom here. At exactly 1:00 pm every afternoon (except Christmas and Good Friday), a cannon fires a single round and a ball drops from a tower. This was done in past centuries so that sailors could set their navigational instruments to a precise time. It still carries on each day today.

The man in the picture below is Tom MacKay (pronounced  "Mikai").  For decades he shot the "one o'clock cannon" everyday. His son, Robert (who you saw in a previous post) works at the University of Edinburgh as the Servitor...meaning he is in charge of looking after all the building facilities there. This man, his father, is a bit of a legend around here.  He died a few years ago.  No, that isn't really him.  It is a cardboard image of him.

Next you walk up the winding path to the  2nd level of buildings. You may notice in the middle of the walkway, the stones are laid in a different pattern. This was to make it easier for the horses to get up the steep pathways rather than slipping on the stones spaced further apart.

One of the first buildings you come to on the 2nd level is actually the oldest surviving structure here in the Castle and also in the whole city of Edinburgh. It is St. Margaret's Chapel. Margaret, whose family were contenders for the throne of England, fled England when William the Conqueror came to power instead. She married the King of Scotland, Malcolm III, and became one of their most loved queens. She was a devout Christian, promoted education and welfare for the poor.  She was recognized as a saint by the Catholic church many years later.

This is one of the rooms in the Royal living quarters. Here is the fireplace in the sitting room. Just behind this room is the royal bedroom and just off that is a tiny little room where Mary, Queen of Scots gave birth to King James VI of Scotland who became King James I of England.  He is the King James of the King James Bible.  As our guide said, the room is no bigger than a cupboard.

This picture is taken in The Great Hall, another part of the royal living quarters. Here they held banquets and official royal activities. David got to go behind the barrier and try out a Scottish Long Sword called a Claymore.  It weighs about 8 pounds.

The Great Hall contains armor on loan from The Tower of London. There were swords of all sizes, body armor, shields, spears, guns, trench cannons and more.

The next two pictures are taken from the front and back of a building now use as the National War Museum. It contains memorials and the names of each and every person who has died in the service of Scotland.  Scotland lost over 150,000 people in "the Great War" (WW1).  It lost about 50,000 in WW2.  But Britain continues to lose soldiers every week in Afghanistan.  Some of those are Scots and their names will be added.  It is a solemn place.

There was a very detailed display for "The Honours of Scotland", also known as the crowned jewels...the sword, scepter and crown. These were bestowed on the Kings and Queens of Scotland when it became officially recognized as a nation by the religious leaders. They were hidden numerous times to protect them from invaders and were stashed away for 111 years after Scottish and English Parliaments united in 1707. There they stayed until Walter Scott  remembered them and started searching for them. They were found in a wooden truck, just where they had been left.  David got a chance to  join a procession of bishops and popes.  But he wasn't dressed for the occasion.

After all this walking and climbing, we went into The Queen Ann Cafe and had coffee and scones.YUM!

The buttery looking stuff is "clotted cream". Apparently it is the product you get when you churn cream but just before it turns to butter. Delicious!

The castle was about to close so we started the walk back down to the bottom level. Here is a shot of me standing against some of the volcanic rock that serves as a foundation for all the buildings. You can see bits and pieces of it coming out from under and around many of the buildings. Two sides of the castle sit on the exposed rock and a third side, though covered in vegetation, is also the same rock. In person, it is easy to see that it would be very difficult for an army to overtake the castle except from the one side which has a more gradual incline.

This was a great day of sight seeing. Before I came to Scotland, I read a book by Alison Weir called The Children of Henry VIII and now I am reading another of her books called The Life of Elizabeth I. This visit to the castle was great timing because I have learned a lot of the background information which made this visit even more fascinating. I hope you all are having a great day and will post more soon.

Day 11, Saturday September 26, "The Cairns and back home again"

Happy birthday, Papaw! This morning we will finish up our visit to Inverness (meaning "the mouth of the river Ness" [the Gaelic is Ibhin Nis]) and head back to Edinburgh. There was a less touristy place that we decided to visit. Just a little east of Inverness is a 4000 year old burial site. Yes, that is 2000 B.C. (or BCE if you prefer).  We know very little about people at this time and these burials are mostly a mystery. As many of you know, we have a dog that is a Cairn Terrier (a Toto dog from the Wizard of Oz). They are so named because the Scots would build up large piles of stones called "cairns" out in their fields. They would place stashes of food, water and other provisions in these cairns so that they could have supplies when they stayed out with the sheep at night. Cairn terriers were used to keep vermin out of the cairns and other places around the farms. Today, we learned that the early people of this area also used cairns as burial places.

At this site there were three cairns. One was a closed circle of stones; and they found evidence that this was used as a place of cremation. There were four different sections with a various types of stone used in each section. Out from three sides were mounds of rubble like rays that lead to three of the standing stones that surrounded the cairn in an outer ring. No one know the significance except that like Stonehenge there are standing stones and the sun at the mid-winter solstice lines up perfectly with one.

There are other cairns on each side of this central, complete one. Each of these has an entrance and they discovered some human remains in each. They think the people may have partially cremated their loved ones and then removed their remains to the other two cairns to finish decomposition. They also think that they were  used over and over again rather than as a final resting place for just one person or family.

You can see that there is a ring of large stones all around the outside. The inside is composed of stacked rocks.

Originally, the cairn's top was completely enclosed with a ceiling of rock and a very small tunnel entrance where you see the opening now. There were lintels over the opening so that you'd have to crawl to the center. Over time the top rocks have fallen, leaving it looking like an open circle.

There were no symbols or decorations made in the stones with the exception of some circles carved into 1 or 2 stones in each cairn. Each cairn was surrounded by standing stones that grew in size as they went around the outer perimeter.

To get there we had to drive down one lane roads; no way for two cars to pass unless you both got over on the soft shoulder. As was common, fields of sheep and stone walls were all around. Occasionally there were fields with both cattle and sheep, but we saw a lot more sheep.

We had a wonderful visit to Inverness! But you know...there's no place like home. Or is there? We've already shown you the McDonald's and the Domino's Pizza. Imagine our surprise as we stopped in the city of Perth on the way back to Edinburgh. What did we see? Yep, that's a 24 hour Wal-Mart! Well it is a store called "Asda" and Wal-Mart bought out the company several years back and have turned them into Super-Wal-Marts.  There were people every where, buying food, clothing, automotive supplies and household stuff.  Too bad the economy is not good.  More tomorrow.

Day 10, September 25 Loch Ness and the Highland Mountains

Hello, everyone. We are a bit behind posting since our internet was "dodgy", as the hotel attendant said. Today was a day that needed a long list of superlatives. Wow, amazing, unbelieveable, fantabulous...we simply couldn't come up with words to describe what we were seeing. We wish the camera was as good as the eye.

We began the day in search of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. Sadly, we did not find her. One of the locals told us that we would have had a better chance if we'd had a whiskey first. And we would have had a much, much better chance if we'd had 3 or 4!  Loch Ness is the largest loch in Scotland and holds more water than all the fresh water lakes and lochs in Britain.

Loch Ness is so large it has its own waves and sounds like the ocean; it is a dark blue because it is so deep. It is surrounded by gentle hills in the northeast and serious mountains in the southwest (it runs southwest to northeast).  Next we visited Urquhart Castle, built on the banks of Loch Ness.

First built in the 1200's by native people called Picts in this region. The castle was located in a strategic and valuable spot so there was much fighting over it; and the castle changed hands numerous times. It was damaged beyond the ability to defend it and so was abandoned in the 19th century.

As you can see, the weather was beautiful today but it was very, very windy up on this high spot on the loch. It normally rains a great deal in the area, but we were blessed with three days of great weather.







They had a replica of a catapult that was used to attack fortresses and castles.

Next we headed down the very winding and narrow roads that lead to the Highland Mountains. Though I am not an experienced traveler, I can easily say that this was the most beautiful place I have ever been. Here is where we needed more superlatives. Enjoy.

 

 

 

At the end of the journey west, we came upon Eilean Donan Castle located on Loch Duich . This is the most photographed castle in history. It  has appeared in many films such as one of the James Bond movies.

Eilean Donan castle is a tidal castle meaning that when high tide comes in, it is surrounded by water and access is cut off. By the time we reached this far west it began to lightly rain.

We didn't have time to tour the castle, but we did spend some time outside on the grounds and in the information center. We didn't want to have to traverse those mountains on those tiny roads after dark so we headed back. On the road back to Inverness, we took a slightly different route which actually took us even higher up in elevation. The temperature dropped ten degrees and as we got out to take this photo, we realized how cold it really had gotten.

David did an amazing job of navigating the roads, with a 5-speed transmission, the steering wheel on the wrong side (or as they say here, the right side) and of course, driving on the wrong side of the road. By the time we got back down off the mountain, he was actually enjoying himself.

We mentioned in an earlier post how it looked like we were driving through a gigantic Christmas tree, but it was just the Scotch pines and other conifers that naturally grow in this area. There were thousands of them everywhere you look and they were perfectly formed.

Tired but happy, we returned to Inverness. We had a great dinner in a pub called The Exchange which was just a block from our  hotel. David had salmon and I had cod (fish & chips). The food was simple but really fresh, and we really enjoyed it. Well, tomorrow we head back to Edinburgh but we have several stops along the way. Check back with you soon.

Our Trip to the Scottish Highlands

Hello, everyone! Today was a travel day. Cathy and I are going to Inverness, a city that is known as the gateway to the Scottish Highlands. Actually, Inverness is right in the middle of the Highlands.

The cab arrived right at 9 am and took us to Arnold Clark, a popular car rental company here in the UK. Our cabbie was an interesting fellow. He is a falconer and is responsible for keeping the runways at Edinburgh airport free of birds. He has 5 birds (4 falcons, 1 eagle) and he takes them to the airport to hunt down and kill sea gulls, geese, ducks and other birds that could get sucked into the engines on take-off or landing. Good news for travelers!

We rented a nice little Renault, an upgrade from the Kia we paid for. Yes, I’m driving on the wrong side of the road a 5 speed car. They don’t have many automatics over here. When you rent a car, they assume a 5 speed. In fact, they’ll look at you funny if you ask for car with an automatic transmission. I had a hard time getting out of the parking lot of the car rental place because it was uphill and I had it in 3rd gear. It kept dying on me. Go figure! I found 1st gear after a few tries and we were off, through roundabouts, strange traffic lights and signs hard for us to read.

But once we left Edinburgh, the trip became a lot more fun. We traveled almost straight north from Edinburgh, by Perth and ultimately arrived in Inverness about 4 hours later. Inverness is about 180 miles north of Edinburgh. It is at the north-eastern end of Loch Ness. Here are a few of the pictures of the view on the way up. The Highlands consists of mountains that seem to pop-up from nowhere. They are high enough and we are far enough north that the tops of the mountain don’t have any trees on them, they have scrubby bushes called broom, and small plants called heather. Yes, heather! The broom blooms in June and July. They have folk songs here about falling in love when the yellow is on the broom. Heather is blooming now, though it is at the end of the bloom. It blooms pink or purple.  Here is Cathy with some heather!

About halfway during our trip today up north we saw hundreds of thousands of acres of 40-60 foot perfectly formed Christmas-looking trees. Conifers, Spruces, Pines. They were amazing. Made us think of Christmas and having the perfect tree. It was like a huge Christmas tree farm. We’ll try to get some pictures of those on the way back to Edinburgh.

We had a late lunch at a place called The Filling Station. We both had a traditional fish & chips, which were good. But even better was the garlic cheese bread they brought out as an appetizer. It looked like a small pizza, but was amazingly delicious.

We’re staying at an old hotel called The Royal Highland Hotel. It has a great shower. Our flat in Edinburgh has a weanie shower. Half the time there is no hot water and at times the pressure is so low it just dribbles out. But here we have a hot shower, a warm room and a comfortable bed.  Well almost comfortable.  We miss our tempra-pedic mattress!








Here is our room with a view.

Here are a few shots of the River Ness at the center of the city.

There is a modern looking castle by the river. I don’t think it is old but what is a city without a castle? Later we found that it was built in the 1800's and remodled more recently.

We’ve taken pictures of some of the building and the shoppes here in Inverness. We’re far north here, on the same latitude as Moscow.

From time to time you’ll see familiar stores. We went into a McDonald’s today but didn’t see anything familiar on the menu. No Big-Macs. No double-cheeseburgers. Still it had the McDonald look and smell.

Apparently the MacDonald Clan was a ruthless bunch of mauraders here in the Highlands so Ronald McDonald must be from a different branch! Tomorrow we are going to explore the lochs and the Highland Mountains. Till then.