Castle Touring

Since we were only in Scotland for 2 days max, Travis organized a castle tour (Travis takes over from here)...out in the country side. This of course means renting a car which also means driving on the opposite side of car and street, this proved a tad hard to accept at times. As most of you know I don't know my left from right in an everyday, normal situation. But, apparently my mind did retain the fact that when I make a right turn at home it is going to the tight lane and when I make a left turn it is going to the wide lane. This is not so in Scotland. I could not get left and right straight and on many times Fick and I turned into the oncoming traffic lane as naturally as could be!

The first stop was a site that the Scotland Historical Society website has on thier home page, front and center. It was holes in the ground...which is my job, holes in the ground...so we had to see it. After some "off the beaten path" hiking where I almost made a decision to try to squeeze through an electrial charged fence, 10 feet from the power station we found the more historic side of the site. A huge natural looking rounded carving in the ground that was a 20 foot thick wall that surrounded the town, as we passed placard after placard with no holes I was getting nervous, maybe this wasn't the right place...great :( Next thing you know, holes in the ground. They were orginally dug as pits with spears facing up that the enemy would fall in and get impaled...I knew this was my kind of place.

(Fick is back, heyyyyyy) Next up I got behind the wheel and we drove a bit further out to the town of Stirling to see the William Wallace Monument. It is a huge tower built on a craig in 1846 to recognize the savior of Scotland. It's an impressive gothic style monument that housed mostly informational bits, but did have his sword on display and it was HUGE and therefore scary. It took a bit of climbing uphill to get to it and then you had to scale 246 steps to reach the pinnacle, which was the windiest place I've ever been. We saw a castle from up there and it was close by so we decieded to head over. It was Stirling Castle, The Bruce Family Castle. Impressive, huge, gorgeous garden, you know...a castle. It had some pretty sizable gardens along with several different buildings that make up the castle grounds, added by various family members over the years. It had a gorgeous view and a formidable position at the top of a hill so you could see the advantage of this position if you had people out there who would consider invading your shit.

The day was winding down and we headed over to Dollar Glen to visit one last place, Campbell Castle. Set out in the country for real, in a bit of disrepair, but this was the most impressive to me. It boasted a fantastic view of the valley area and held a strong position on the mountainside that would foil almost any attack. After touring the ruins, we set off on a hiking trail around the castle and headed back to the car. We were getting a bit tired at this point so it was time for some beers! Plus after awhile all castles start to look the same.

During the coarse of the castle tour we also decieded to immerse ourselves in the everyday mans culture and stopped by a few random pubs on the way back. We stopped in the royal borough of Culcross, took some pics, but didn't really see any people, so that was a bit odd. After a brief stop, we headed on over to the only pub in the place to discover what looked like the entire town inside! It was so crowded we couldn't stay, so we hopped back in the car and headed back to Glasgow. We stopped in Bannockburn, determined to have a beer with some locals and avoid anything touristy. We entered the Borestone Pub and their were many drunk Scots inside so we ordered some beers and sat down. Some gentlemen came over to introduce themselves and to talk about why the hell two tourists are in their little pub (but in a nice way). Trav and I tried to chat up these guys, but they were near impossible to understand and vice versa. I can usually follow conversation when accents are involved, but this was like a totally different language. I don't necessarily think it's the accent sometimes, but the slang that makes things completely incomprehensible.

So that ends a very long day of castle touring, time for some whiskey!