And then we woke up and it was the last day.

Dunfermline’s Keavil House hotel came complete with a Scottish fold cat who appeared outside our garden room windows. “Garden room” is a euphemism for “you have a door that opens into bushes near an abandoned greenhouse.” The adorable little grey Scottish fold (those are the ones with the cute ears folded over) apparently frequented the greenhouse for mice. Which would explain his pulchritude.Tho’ he was but little, he was tubby.

And expectant. I spent several minutes attending to his petting needs in the abandoned greenhouse. I also took a sleeve of old planting pots from the greenhouse. (Which, trust me, had been abandoned for at least three years, judging by the spiders). Somehow, I feel good using these pots for my American tomatoes. They were new, although very old, so don’t get excited about diseases and stuff. Scottish souvenirs can be practical.

Harry, an ardent cat fan, was not so lucky to see our new friend, although he did search the grounds.

Off we went to see the kelpies. These are horse head statues 98 feet high, made of thousands of little sheets of metal. They are gorgeous, and their models Baron (head up) and Duke were working Clydesdales. Kelpies, aka brumbies, aka water spirits/sprites/horses, are figures from folklore. Keplies are… unpleasant, yet functional. Water horses would come to you at the edge of some running water and be all sweet and “please feed me an apple you sweet young thing and please get on my back.” The second you did they dove down to the bottom and drowned you. Very useful for keeping kids away from deep water.

From the kelpies we went to another miracle of modern engineering: the Falkirk wheel. This is an elevator for boats. It connects the Forth and Clyde Canal with the Union Canal in Scotland. These canals are not even with each other, so you put the boat in the wheel and it turns and drops you off at the upper or lower other canal. And the one thing everyone in the world who has ever heard of this wheel knows is the famous line: “It takes the same amount of energy as boiling a kettle for one revolution of the wheel.”

I hope whoever wrote that is still getting royalties.

The wheel is cool, but my favorite thing about the place is a Roman fort ruin. You have to use a lot of imagination to understand the fort, because it’s basically a line of moss covered rocks now, but how awesome is it to stand where the guys who were in Scotland when Pontius Pilate was born once stood—bored out of their minds yet nervous and on the lookout for Picts? It feels like the ground beneath your feet is telling you stories.

Maria and I walked there, girl chatting, and back again while the rest watched the wheel. I don’t know if Mr. Fox managed a ride on it, but the rain came on and we all dashed for the van.

From Falkirk we were headed to Doune, but everyone needed lunch and a toilet. We stopped in Dunblane. Yes, THAT Dunblane if you are thinking of Scotland’s only school shooting, back in 1996. Andy Murray, who grew up to be a famous tennis player, was a child in that massacre. Dunblane now has a golden post box and phone booth in honor of his Olympic triumph.

Again, some of the best things in life are unscripted. It was wet, it was rainy, there were only two restaurants and two thrift stores in the town, and the restaurants were crowded. I parked Jack on a sheltered bench with a hot pork pie from the local co-op grocery, and was headed to the public toilets when I saw a sign:

Scotland’s oldest lending library. Open to the public.

Well then!!!

I spent a happy hour being allowed to touch first editions on vellum of the works of Burns, Locke, and other famous Scottish authors. Leighton library had belonged to a rich white guy who built it to deliberately let rich white guys borrow his books–for his own reasons. You can read about the library here, but there is nothing like someone interested in your tiny little museum to make your day as a museum guide. The authoritative scholar, the sweet volunteer, and I had a blast talking books and ideas and history that rainy afternoon in Dunblane.

And I forgot to go to the toilet.

Off to Doune Castle we went, and everyone in the van had a different reason for being excited about this. First, Doune Castle is the one mentioned in the famous ballad The Bonny Earl of Moray (Pronounced Murray) You can read the words here, but the refrain of the ballad says long may his lady look from the castle Doune, and people assume his wife is standing on a turret longing for him. It was his mother, and Doune and down in Scots are pronounced the same. The big irony of that is, this is also the ballad that gave us the word Mondegreens, the term for a misunderstood song lyric. “For they have slain the Earl of Moray and laid him on the green” became over time a woman’s name who had the misfortune to be with him: the non-existant Lady Mondegreen.

The story of Moray’s actual death is one Jack and I tell often, and we spared no details on the van, but I’ll let you read about it here after you finish this post. It’s quite the story.

Meanwhile, two other reasons people were excited about Doune Castle existed: Monty Python, and Outlander. Both were filmed there. I picked up a rock in the courtyard for our friend Karen, who was watching our garden while we were gone and is a big Outlander fan. Oddly enough, Game of Thrones also filmed scenes at Doune, but nobody mentioned it. We were perhaps a more pacifistic group of TV watchers. Jack, btw, is a huge Python fan.

Doune Castle’s other history is also interesting – the usual stories of intrigue, murder, and plot. I’ll tell you one thing about visiting ancient rich people’s homes in Scotand: it reminds you what’s important, and what isn’t, just like leaning against the Birnam Oak. This too shall pass, be careful what you spend your time on because a thousand years from now you could be just another tourist attraction, a mossy wall with a weird vibe, or a tree planted by water still growing. What are you doing with your life, the stone walls of Scottish castles ask. And is it important?

Doune Castle behind us, the group was something between somber and exhausted as we headed to the airport hotel. Tomorrow various members of the group would fly at different times to different places—although Andrea and Harry, Cassidy, Jack and I were all on the same first flight to Atlanta.

The group wanted to do a last night bond, but we also had zippo will to take the tram back into Edinburgh and fight the crowds for an evening meal. So we cozied up in the hotel and ate whatever was on offer and had a good time.

And Harry got the last word. The next morning, Andrea was at the hotel door at 8 am for a shuttle to the airport five minutes away – for a flight that left at noon. We had said Cassidy and our party would join them for 9:30.

Andrea smiled at us. “I hope you don’t mind, when the shuttle comes, we’re going to go ahead and get on it. We will see you at the flight boarding.”

I smiled back. “I understand.”

Sitting next to his wife, Harry shook his head and said, without emotion, “No you don’t.”

Best parting line ever.

And we all flew home and began posting our pictures and telling our stories and savoring the cheeses we smuggled into our luggage and thinking about maybe going back next year.

Actually, next year the tour is the Highlands and Islands, so it goes north and stays there for the most part. The only overlaps are Edinburgh and Fife’s East Neuk. If you’re interested, shoot us an email or FB message. We believe this will be our Last Tour Ever. (Of course we said that in 2022 too, but this time we mean it.)