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.

Stirling

The Straubhaars just can't get enough of castles in Scotland. Here you see my siblings Nola, Shirley (sister in law), Carol and Jack heading into Stirling Castle, which was very impressive.

It is across a valley from a tower monument to William Wallace, the Scots hero fictionalized in Braveheart, which you can see in the next photo.


Stirling Castle is also home to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment of Scots infantry. We went through their museum, which is sort of a historical trip through almost all of the U.K.'s imperial and overseas ventures. The next illustration is a painting, called the Thin Red Line, of one of their more famous stands, against a Russian charge at Balaclava.

It is interesting to me that Scotland, having been militarily re-conquered in a civil war as recent as 1746, when the Scots' Jacobite rebellion was put down very bloodily at Culloden (more on that later), now has one of the strongest military traditions of all the parts of the U.K. Not unlike the American South, which I am still trying to figure out.

Blackness claims Mel Gibson

After a day in Edinburgh, we headed the next day north toward Stirling and later Inverness. On the way, however, we were always game for a new castle or two. So we stopped at Blackness Castle, not far from the Edinburgh airport. Here you see the castle itself.

It was designed as a very strong, simple defensive castle -- not one of your fancy jobs that is more palace than castle. It held out pretty well against Oliver Cromwell, which is not true of many castles in England, Scotland or Ireland.


A nicer residence was added later, which you see here. The main castle has also been been used for several movies, including Mel Gibson's Hamlet.

The village of Blackness is a very cute place-- which you can see below. It not only has the castle, but a nice sailing ship harbor, a couple of pubs, a couple of bed and breakfast places, and a post office. It looked like a nice place to spend a quiet holiday, like finishing a book or something.

Vegetarian Haggis?

One of my favorite things in the whole world is the ever burgeoning supply of examples of global cultural hybridity. How else can you explain a sign in an Edinburgh pub window offering vegetarian haggis?

For you fortunately uninitiated into the mysteries of haggis, it is a sort of mealy sausage made of oatmeal stuffed into a sheep's stomach. (Yummers!)

It is often put out there as one of the definite parts of Scots cuisine, something very local and traditional. Interesting then, that someone wants to sell a vegetarian version to Scots and tourists who want to maintain their heritage while also joining the definitely non-traditional global move toward becoming vegetarian -- a very laudable trend, mind you, but not one I ever expected to see connected with haggis.

Edinburgh

Our second day in Scotland we explored Edinburgh. The first thing we all went to was Edinburgh Castle, which you can see here.

My sister Nola is crazy about castles, and as fans of most things medieval, Sandy, Chris and I are as well. In the next photo, you can see my sister Nola, Sandy, my brother Jack and his wife Shirley laughing uproariously at a cannon, for some reason ;<) Not really, but I did not hear the joke since I was too busy taking photos.

Sandy wanted to make immediately for the oldest part, an eleventh century chapel for Queen/Saint Margaret. You can see her in stained glass here from that chapel.

After that, we went to see an educational reenactment in the the castle's great hall by a man dressed up as an 18th century British sailor, who talked about how people got recruited into the Navy, using some young men in the audience, including Chris, as examples. You can see a photo of him checking out Chris' hands. Since Chris did not have too many calluses, he decided Chris might make a better blood-thirsty ship's Marine than a sailor.

After the castle, we wandered about getting people's tartan shopping needs taken care of, having lunch and seeing many churches and museums.

New Lanark

Sandy, Chris and I are touring around Scotland and Ireland for the next two weeks with three of my four brothers and sisters: Carol, Jack and his wife Shirley, and Nola. The first photo here shows my sister Nola and Sandy with our driver and tour guide, Mark. (We arranged the tour through Back Roads Tours of London, which will create a custom itinerary, provide a guide and driver-- leaving the driving, on the wrong side of narrow roads, to them.) Sandy is holding a bottle of Irn Bru (Iron Brew), Scotland's own soft drink.

Our first day, Mark picked us up at the Glasgow airport. That ironically let us also see the ancestral village of our Gardner ancestors (my mother's maiden name). The village they lived in for several hundred years, Bulgley Renfrew, is now underneath the Glasgow airport, so not too much left to see.

We also had ancestors in Lanark between Glasgow and Edinburgh, so we drove from the airport through the Clyde Valley, to Lanark. We stopped and looked at it and the utopian industrial community of New Lanark. The picture shows my sister Nola, Sandy, me, my sister Carol, my brother Jack and his wife Shirley on the hill above New Lanark.

New Lanark was where one rather benign industrialist, Robert Owen, created a cotton spinning industry to harness the falls on the River Clyde, and also deliberately designed a community where the workers got paid fairly decently, got good community housing and where their kids got an education. It lasted from the 1780s to 1960, and has been restored as a world heritage site.

Here is a view of New Lanark as we walked down toward it from the ridge (and parking lot) above.

The next picture shows a building which housed the education and leisure facilities for the community. Kids got basic education, adults could have dancing classes, adult literacy, etc. The statue supposedly shows a girl of the era.

Just up the Clyde River from New Lanark are some falls which show the vertical drop in the river that provided the water power for the cotton mills. There is a very nice nature walk along the river up toward the falls, so those of us who were feeling least jet-lagged, Jack, Sandy and me took a one kilometer hike up along the river, which you can see in the next photo.


The next photo shows the Corra Linn Falls, the first and most spectacular of three falls on the Clyde above Lanark. We got just about that far and discovered that we were a bit too jet lagged ourselves to keep going, so we went back and had lunch in New Lanark's cafeteria with the others. Then we motored on the rest of the way along the Clyde toward Edinburgh.