Inverness, Culloden, and Edinburgh, Scotland 5-29 thru 6-1-09

On Friday, the 29th, we took the train from near Manchester, England to Inverness, Scotland in about 7 hours. Again we met people who were tour guides and gave us wonderful suggestions about where to visit. On the leg from Edinburgh to Inverness we sat with a consultant to schools in Great Britain and an emergency room physician. They were fascinating. Missed a lot of photo ops because we got so involved in conversation with them. Schools in Great Britain sound so similar to those in the USA with all the same challenges. This photo is just north of Newcastle.

Beautiful scenery around Pitlochry, Scotland, where we saw lots of hikers and fishermen. We were told that this is a winter ski area, too. There are a lot of Scotch distilleries near here.

A ruin seen from the train. The sheep are have long, shaggy hair and big round horns. I couldn't capture a photo of the Scottish Highland cattle that are soooo cute.

This looked like a wonderful place to fly fish.

Rock walls like this one were everywhere.

In the distance is the Moray Firth (firth means mouth). This was the view as we came into Inverness.

There is not a Marriott in Inverness so we stayed right next door to the train station in this very old hotel. The room was small with twin beds. We were lucky to get a fan. We were amazed that we didn't hear the trains. The location was wonderful and the free English breakfast was good.

The main staircase in the hotel looked more elegant than the rest of the place. The restaurant served a delicious dinner. We both liked the Haggis, Neeps (turnips), and Tatties (potatoes). We sat next to natives of Edinburgh. She was a retired teacher and he worked for Marathon in Africa. They have a flat in Edinburgh and a home in Africa. They were leaving the next day for an archaeological dig on Orkney Island.

This photo is for Tyler, Blake, and Austin. Tyler loved Bob the Builder when he was younger. This ride was in the Inverness Train Station.

I really like this photo of Ted on the boat crossing Loch Ness, near Inverness. We took a bus tour out and back. The driver was really into genealogy and shared several books on Scottish names, clans, and tartans. His stories of the history of Inverness, the Jacobites, and the geography were fun to hear and informative. He covered the monster in one short sentence. On the boat we met a group of students from Rice University who were studying the difference in health systems between Great Britain and the USA. We also met a couple from Cincinnati who have retired to Colorado and were in Scotland on a house swap. It was very interesting to hear how they do that. They had spent two years living on their boat and traveling the Caribbean before moving to Colorado. We ran into them later in the day at Culloden. We ran into the kids two days later on the train out of Inverness.

The shoreline of Loch Ness is pastoral and peaceful. What you don't get from the photograph is how dark the water is. It looks like India ink. That is because the water in the loch has filtered through peat on the way downstream.

The boat let us off at Urquahart Castle on the shore of Loch Ness. We had an hour to explore the ruins and see the video in the visitor center before catching the tour bus back to town.

Urquahart Castle was blown up by English Government (Williamite) forces who didn't want it to become a Jacobite stronghold. It was never rebuilt.

There was a label over this grate that said, "latrine". I got a kick out of this because I had a wonderful book on Castles by McCauley when I was teaching. The illustrations showed just such a hole and how it led to a pit many floors below. My students thought it was a hoot.

We have seen quite a few caravans, as they are called here. We have seen a couple of caravan parks, too. This is about the largest that we have seen.

Leakey's Bookshop and Cafe had a tasty and cheap lunch on the balcony of this one time church. The tubs of old maps of Great Britain were interesting and we found copies of the Doomsday Book.

Fraser's Butcher was busy. Those are pasties at the top of the photo.

The Victorian Market is made up of very little specialty shops. Some are for tourists, but most are for locals.

Gorse can be seen everywhere. It makes a pretty hedge around farm fields. It is a pest in the USA. It was brought over by a Scotsman who missed "The gorse of the auld country".

My former teaching team-mate, Becky, and I have been reading a series of books about Scotland. The main characters play a big role in the Jacobite rebellion and the battle at Culloden (pronouced Ku lod' en) so I was motivated to see the battlefield, which is five miles from Inverness. It is and was a moor with thick, bristly brush that would have made walking very difficult. There was a lot of Gorse, which has needle sharp spines.Not all of the Jacobites would have been this well dressed.

Note the girth on this British soldier. I am sure there were thin, young warriors, but this was a museum in Scotland

My great grandmother was a Bylth(e) or Bligh. While here I learned that they were of the Clan Buchanan. I also learned that I have other Scottish ancestors (McWhorter/McWhirter, Chambers, and, maybe, Dunn). On Ted's side, there were also Marks offshoots of the MacDonalds, one of Scotland's largest Clans. Most people couldn't read or write so names were spelled how they sounded to whomever could write, leading to many spellings for the same family. This Bligh was Scottish, but fighting on the English government side as did many clans. The Jacobite war was a civil war. Family members fought against each other just like during our civil war.

The battle at Culloden lasted an hour with the British winning overwhelmingly. These stones mark the mass burials of whole clans. The mounds can be clearly seen. Culloden was the last major battle fought on British soil and ended Scottish independence.

This is Leanach cottage. It was probably used by the British as a field hospital during the Culloden battle on April 16, 1746. The Jacobites got no such treatment. Wounded were left on the field to die. It is so hard to look at something that old and believe that it has existed that long.

The land around the battlefield is rolling farm land. The area around Inverness and Culloden reminds us of the north end of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.

The Inverness Castle overlooks the River Ness and this very walkable town in the Highlands. The patios of pubs were full of young people and there was a large modern indoor mall on the edge of old town. On the way to the Culloden battlefield, the bus stopped at a shopping area with a Home Depot-type store and a Borders book store among others. We heard that many Americans retire here. This church is the site where the Jacobite prisoners were shot in full view of the British wounded that were lying in the make-shift hospital across the river Ness. This photo was taken from in front of that building.

There are several pedestrian and vehicle bridges across the river with easy walking paths on both sides. The town is small. It is easy to imagine living here 250 years ago.

Sunday, the 31st, we took the train to Edinburgh. This is our non-Marriott hotel within walking distance of Old Town.

The accommodations were a bit spartan, but worked. We weren't in the room much. Sure made us appreciate the Marriotts that Erin had hooked us up with.

As soon as we settled into the hotel we walked to High Street, also known as The Royal Mile. This is Cockburn Street that was created by cutting through the 'skyscrapers' of the era in the mid 1800s to make New Town and Waverly Train Station more accessible. All other exits from High Street were very narrow alleys, called closes like the one below.

A little local color is expected on this very touristy street.

St. Giles Catherdral functions as a kind of Westminster Abbey of Scotland and was the preaching ground of John Knox, according to Rick Steves. It sits on The Royal Mile, located to the left of the church. At the bottom of the hill is the Firth of Forth and Holyrood Castle, a residence of Queen Elizabeth II. Ediburgh Castle was up the hill behind me as I took the photograph.

Deacon Brodie was a real person who was the inspiration for the book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, also a resident of Edinburgh. The good deacon was a fine, upstanding community member by day and a gambler and generally unsavory character by night.

Most of High Street is traffic free. It was a beautiful day and the crowds were thick.

The Walter Scott Monument as seen through one of the closes along The Royal Mile. Walter Scott was an Edinburgh native.

Our second day we visited Edinburgh Castle. Note the cannons above and to the left of the gate. They still look formidable. There is a one o'clock cannon fired every day from the castle. We were told that the cannon was fired at one rather than noon so the the Scotch would only have to pay for one shell rather then twelve.

The guards stand in heavy wool kilts for an hour at a time. The national services take turns serving at the castle.

We spotted this plaque in the castle and thought of our friends from Nova Scotia.

Edinburgh Castle is built on top of a volcano. The evidence of past volcanism is everywhere.

The Great Hall was the castle's ceremonial meeting place in the 16th and 17th centuries. The hammer-beam roof and the iron peephole seen just to the top and right of the fireplace are the only surviving elements from that time. The peephole to the upper right was used by the king to spy on his guests.

The restoration included replacing the stained glass windows.

What a nice view our southern Edinburgh from the Great Room.

King James VI and I of England was born to Mary, Queen of Scots in this closet size room. He was the first monarch of both England and Scotland.

Soldiers serving at the castle were allowed to have dogs and these beloved pets were given graves here. The British really love their animals. There is also a statue of Grayfriar's Bobby in Edinburgh. He was a Scottish terrier that guarded his master's grave for 14 years until his own death.

The Walter Scott Monument dominates the view from the top of the castle. Britannia, the retired royal yacht is docked on the Firth of Forth in the background.

Waverly Train Station sits in the center of Edinburgh, but is not easily seen unless from this view high in the castle.

This is a cistern that served the old town.

This is all we could see of Holyrood Castle. It is still the official residence of the royal family in Scotland. Price Charles was coming the next day. We didn't feel the need to see inside, but were disappointed with the view after the long walk down the hill, especially knowing that we had to walk back up to find a place for dinner.

Holyrood sits on the left and the new, modern Scottish Parliament, in use since 2005, sits on the right. Parliament seems so out of place among all the medieval buildings. The bit of countryside in the background is a nice surprise.