Tag Archives: Scotland

The Last Day

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 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.)

Day 10: It’s the Little Things

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Sometimes the best parts of a holiday are the little things, and this was a day full of the small happinesses that make up a big happiness.

First thing: the hotel had a pool. I got up early and enjoyed it, but as the minutes ticked by, it began to fill with Germans who all knew each other, and who had no intention of circle swimming. The water came to look plowed as people continued to pile in, and since I wasn’t with them, and I was doing a 20-minute water tread instead of swimming back and forth, dirty looks came my way.

Not so the lady swimming back and forth next to me. I scooted over, and she smiled and said in a very Scottish accent, “I can go around ya easy enough.” We began chatting as she half-protected me from the encroaching snarling women who wanted my corner for their own. She swam at the pool mornings before going to her nursing job in town.

“Is it always this crowded?” I asked as two more bodies tumbled in next to us.

“Nah. Sometimes it’s much worse.” She grinned.

After the swim and a fun breakfast full of international foods again, off we went to Dunfermline.

Now you need to remember that Jack and I used to live here, and in the East Neuk, so for me this was old home week. Everyone else was oohing and aahing over the sites and I was looking to see if the tea shop was still on the corner. I was also very aware that Dunfermline’s High Street, not far from its historic abbey, has seven-count ’em, seven-thrift stores. The abbey is next to the library and I ran a storytelling club there for about a decade.

So Cassidy and I went to the Abbot’s House just in front of the Abbey, because it is beautiful and historic. It was owned by a lady who basically kept Scotland’s second-most famous poet safe during the Reformation. She was rich, and she was a royal backer, so when she took him into her house as a guest, Robert Henryson was safe, even though some of his poems had not been looked on kindly as religions and allegiances swung back and forth in the ponderous pendulum of who was trying to get more power. After the reformation, it was owned by an herbalist named Anne Halkitt who almost got burned for a witch; ironically the great Dunfermline fire saved her.

Back when the Historic Trust for Scotland was trying to get more kids to visit historic properties, I led mouse hunts through the Abbot’s House, telling kids the sanitized version of various historic events, and letting them look for the mice that decorated the walls because Henryson had done Scots versions of the Aesop fables, and there was the infamous story of all the mice leaving town before the great fire that destroyed the house’s second floor in the 1600s, etc. It was fun. And I still know where every mouse is, and what she represents.

But my favorite part of the Abbot’s House is out front, in the saying over the door, which I will translate here: Since word enslaves but thoughts are free keep well thy tongue I counsel thee.

Good advice then, good advice now.

After the Abbot House Cassidy and I peeled off as the rest of the group followed Jack into PIttencrieff Park. The biggest thing to know about the park is, Andrew Carnegie (yeah, the guy who got rich) was born in Dunfermline and not allowed to play in the park as a child. When he made the big time, he bought the park and opened it to all the children of Dunfermline. Sometimes, just sometimes, the best therapy is revenge. But only if the revenge is kind to other people, shall we say?

The second thing to know about the park is, by skipping it, Cassidy and I found two sweaters, two rare recordings, a pair of shoes that looked like cats, a purse, and some yarn.

It was a good morning.

Dunfermline Abbey is gorgeous and one of those places my friend Donald Leech (a medievalist at UVA Wise) likes to hold up as what people get wrong about those times. Color was EVERYWHERE in this abbey. All the colors they knew how to make (three, but hey it’s a start) were spiraling around pillars, decorating the sides of the stained glass windows, across the coats of arms of wealthy families who went to church there.

The palace next to the abbey was originally a priory, and then King David I (1124-1153) made it into a palace. Charles I was the last king to be born there in 1600 (he’s the king who got beheaded after a trial for treason in 1649. It’s unusual for a king to be beheaded, but that Declaration of Arbroath changed a lot of the responsibilities royals were expected to uphold for their people.)

One more thing about the palace: David was the son of Margaret and Malcolm, and if you want to read about an amazing piece of Scottish history, look up Malcolm Canmore and Margaret of Hungary. There isn’t enough space to go into their lives here, but they might be the most fascinating royal couple ever. The only thing I can’t resist saying here is, Shakespeare missed the better story. MacBeth reigned shortly before Malcolm (whose reign ended in 1097, and whose father was Duncan; yes, THAT Duncan). Shakespeare really should have written about the double Ms. They were formidable.

But he didn’t. And Cassidy and I still beat everyone else to the abbey, despite our shopping streak. We had a wonderful look around, imagining the colors on a sunny day and the monks walking on the now-derelict walkway above, and the gold stars put into the ceiling. It would have been heady.

Then we walked out to the palace, and Cassidy went to the tower while I went to the queen’s chamber. We met later, and compared notes. What the guides don’t tell you is that taking the turning stairs to the second floor of the ruined palace is, in a word, terrifying. Hands and knees, I crawled, telling myself it was okay, I knew Jesus, if today was my day He would receive me, although He and all the angels would be laughing at how I died. And thinking that my tombstone would say “she was an eejit for trying” and also thinking that once I got up, I would have to come back down….

Cassidy later sent a video of herself, hyperventilating as she inched down, hugging the wall. Highly not recommended. Andrea took one look and said, “Nope.” Harry just turned around with her.

I think Mr. Fox might have tried it, but Lulu wouldn’t let him.

Altogether once again, we visited the gift shop. Because that’s what you do after seeing almost a thousand years of history and surviving a near-death experience.

Awed by the majesty and the intense history of the place, I bought a rubber duck in full regalia playing the bagpipes. Made in China sticker on its bum.

In my defense, it was for a good friend who collects them and loves Scotland.

Off to Falkland we drove, everyone comparing notes on the palace stairs. Fiona hadn’t tried, Gareth raced up and down them, and Lulu didn’t want to talk about it.

Falkland is famous for its marriage stones. On either side of the top the doorway in a newly built house (back in the 1500s and 1600s) people would put stones with the initials of the two newlyweds, and the date of their marriage in a stone in the center. What’s really sweet is some people in the side streets of Falkland paint pieces of slate with their initials and date of marriage and set them beside their doorways.

The Falkland palace was the royal hunting lodge (read: weekend getaway) for the Royal Stuarts. Mary Queen of Scots would have hunted there, along with her traitor son who agreed to her execution so he could be both King of England and of Scotland. (This is the one who was terrified of witches and nothing went well for herbalists and other strong women for awhile there in either country.)

Falkland holds 500 years of amazing Scottish history. It’s also where they filmed the opening scene of Outlander, so the buses just kept pulling up to the market cross and teashop, one after the other. People filed out, took photos, filed back on, and the next bus came.

I can’t really talk. I bought a duck playing the bagpipes in one of the oldest preserved abbeys in the country.

And then it was off to the East Neuk. Of course we had to go to Anstruther for their famous fish suppers (for lunch, you understand). Even Gareth couldn’t finish all the leftovers. I used to joke about the self-loathing that follows a good fish supper given that everything is fried and battered and bad for you and tastes so good.

And then it was St. Andrews. I feel a bit sad visiting St. Andrews these days. When we lived in the area it was my go-to for the grocery store, or a day out thrifting, meeting a friend for tea, and walking the cathedral grounds. It kept me grounded when I was writing my dissertation, as a newly wed while Jack was working during the day.

But the cathedral ruins were declared unsafe after some stones and mortar fell from a tower. They embedded in the ground and everyone knew it was time to fence the ruins off. So now they’re behind chain link.

St Andrews is also the place where, as you walk past the ruined palace on one of the side roads to the shops, you can look down and see the brass X where Wycliffe was burned to death. The Bible translator. Just walking around, and that’s where died. It’s a wee bit melancholic.

I showed Cassidy how to find the 12 charity shops of St Andrews, and then Jack and I went on an errand.

Several years ago, on another trip to Scotland leading a tour, Jack had bought me some Sheila Fleet earrings. These are high end Scottish-themed products. And on a recent trip to Richmond, one fell off. We were going to replace them.

But when I told the lady in the shop the story, she went behind the counter and produced a catalog. “The Fleets will replace a lost earring. And since these are sentimental from your husband, she would be happy to do that.” She gave me contact details, and wrote down the model number and information. “I’d be happy to sell you a new pair, but what you really want is your old pair intact. And that’s a design she doesn’t do anymore, but she never throws away the molds. So write her.”

We took the card away, and this is on my to-do list once I finish all the adventure blogs.

From St. Andrews it was back across Fife to the hotel, where the sunny solarium was heaving with the Germans from the swimming pool. Some of them recognized me. I tried to keep a low profile. And there was sticky toffee pudding and cranachan for dessert, and everyone went to bed happy but feeling a little sad, too.

Tomorrow was our last day.