Road to the Isles, Green Wellies

The Duke of Argyll, head of the Campbells, still lives in this castle, Inveraray. We visited, had lunch in the tea shoppe, took photos, admired the extensive collection of family portraits by famous artists, the enormous china collection, and lots of spears, claymores, pole-arms, etc. The complete lived-in-castle experience, in short.

After that we drove through a lot of Scotland, headed toward Glasgow. We saw many lochs, lots of mountains, and even more sheep. We stopped for a break a Green Wellies car stop, which seem to favor green rubber Wellington boots as their symbol. Even Green Wellies had a lot of white woolies in back of it, as you can see in the photo.














As we approached Glasgow, I was reminded of something that Sandy found on the Internet even before we left for Scotland. The ancestral village of Bulgley Renfrew, where Gardners lived for a couple of centuries before coming to the U.S. is now underneath the Glasgow airport. You can see a freeway sign right after the airport for what is left of other parts of Renfrew.














Sic transit gloria ancestral village.

High school band in Scotland

I wonder if it would be more fun to be in high school in band in Scotland, where you could really torture the passersby with a bagpipe.

Wandering around after dinner in Oban on the coast we ran into a high school pipe band practicing marching on the street. It seemed really exotic until I saw a really familiar type to contextualize it a bit -- a band Mom holding a plastic bucket for contributions. The high school band fund-raiser may transcend all cultural boundaries after all.

Castle Stalker, ruined churches and Oban

We discovered in Scotland that we were pretty much all suckers for romantic ruined castles on lochs, which are fortunately a Scottish specialty. This is Castle Stalker, which we made our tour guide and driver, Mark, turn around and go back to so we could have a good look at it. Some clever boots had put a restaurant and gift shop on the best view point, so it was a welcome rest stop anyway. We have been putting lots of miles on the small van he is driving us around in, so leg stretching, castle viewing breaks are always welcome.

We kept going after Castle Stalker, on to another Scottish specialty ruins of churches and even cathedrals. Here are Sandy, Chris, and my brother Jack exploring the ruins of the chapel by Castle Dunstaffnage, close to Oban, where we spent the night.














Chris was feeling his oats after a long day in the car, so here he is hamming it up in a window of that same church.


















Oban is beautiful little town on the west coast of Scotland, where you can take ferries out to the Western Isles. This is the view from our hotel there.

Canals, rivers, lochs, locks and Loch Lochy

We drove down the Great Glen in Scotland a couple of days ago. It is a long valley with a whole series of rivers, often with canals alongside, connecting into lakes or lochs.

Here is a canal, with a whole mixed bag of people using it, from kayakers to bicyclists on the tow path, not to mention actual ships, mostly pleasure boats that cruise the lochs and canals. The various boats and ships get from lochs to canals via locks, which raise ships to a higher level of the canal about 15 feet at a time by closing a gate behind the ship and raising the water level with hydraulics.

Here is a picture of one we explored. You can see a ship about ready to get raised up to the next level. You can also possibly see my brother Jack, the engineer, looking on with interest at the top.

To complete the linguistic silliness, this ship is leaving Loch Lochy to get raised up to the canal. The Loch was the scene to a nasty clan battle hundreds of years ago, but it looks placid enough in this photo.

Loch Ness, Castle Urquhart

After we left Inverness, we headed back down south through the Scottish highlands past Loch Ness. Chris and I had fun skipping rocks on Loch Ness as you can see here.

I found the highlands combination of lochs/lakes and mountains incredibly evocative. They reminded me in many ways of the Norwegian fjords, which are some of my favorite natural sites on the planet. The next photo shows just one example.

The next photo shows Urquhart Castle, on Loch Ness.

It is the ultimate winner for best romantically distressed ruin of a castle in a dramatic setting. We tramped all over the castle, with Chris doing his best imitation of a young mountain goat, leaping about on the rocks, giving Sandy fits.

The Gordons at Huntly Castle

My mother's maiden name was Gardner, which was a sept or affiliated branch of the Gordon clan. So we went to see Huntly Castle in Scotland, which my sister Carol had discovered in a family history guide.

Here is the ruin of Huntly Castle. The Gordons were stout defenders of the Catholic faith, but fell out with Bloody Mary anyway, so the castle got blown up once then, then again several times during subsequent battles, being held last by government loyalists against the Jacobites in 1746 . After that, it fell into disrepair. An interesting history can be found at http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/huntly/huntlycastle/index.html.

Next is a photo of my sister-in- law Shirley, my brother Jack, my sister Nola and me in the natty tweed cap ;<)

Then we explored the town of Huntly a bit where we found a bit of cullinary eclecticism or hybridity at the Gordon Arms Hotel restaurant, which was serving Roast Pheasant McLeod and chili con carne. Welcome to Scotland!

Culloden

We spent a couple of nights in the north of Scotland in Inverness. The first day, we went to Culloden. That is the battlefield where British and loyalist Scots troops decisively defeated the last Jacobite rebellion led by Bonnie Prince Charlie, to put his father James on the throne of both Scotland and England. This rising and defeat are the subject of dozens of good songs that I have heard or even learned over the years. Very romantic.

In this first photo, an educational reenactor, acting as a British soldier shows two new "recruits," including Chris, how to use a Brown Bess musket and bayonet, the way they were used in the battle.

I had known the battle was a slaughter, but I had not known quite how bad it was. The museum had a fabulous film in the round of the battle itself. The audience stands in between four screens, between the Highlander charge and the British defense, which first by cannon, then musket volleys, then bayonets, then muskets again on any Scot who broke through the first line. Very intense, very realistic. Very well acted by the reenactors who did it. They looked much better than any of the medieval or other reenactments I have ever seen or been involved in.

Here is a photo of the reenactors in the film for the museum.

After the battle, it got worse yet, as the British killed most of the wounded and prisoners, then many men, women and children who were around the scene. This led to years of suppression of the traditional highland clans, effectively the breakup of that whole life and culture. The Scots still ruminate over and even savor that defeat in an ambivalent way, because romantic as it seems, Bonnie Prince Charlie was not much of a leader, most Scots did not want a traditional Catholic king again, and what we would now think of as modernization was roaring on in the Scottish lowlands in the other direction. Since my own ancestors were living in a village that is now covered by the Glasgow airport, I suppose they would not have thought much of the 1745 rising for Bonnie Prince Charlie.