TELGEN VACATION REPORT
Scotland, May 2000
Ah yes, Bank Holiday
time in Britain—those days which don't celebrate anything in particular, but
give everybody the day off anyway. There are two such days in May, so for the
one at the end of the month we figured it was finally safe to go to Scotland.
(Seeing the rainy, blustery forecasts that seem to predominate there can put
you off visiting eight months of the year.) Our faith in the Scottish weather
was rewarded, as we had some lovely days investigating the countryside and were
only really rained upon once! Here the sun was shining on us as we climbed
around Dumbarton Castle, north of Glasgow on the River Clyde. And did we ever
climb! You can see from the angle of this shot that the top of the castle
grounds are a considerable distance—240 feet, to be exact—from the entrance
point near the river, which you can see at the top of the picture. You climb
some 380 or so stairs to get to the very top, but they come as three or four
separate areas, so it wasn't too bad. The buildings, most of which date to the
18th and 19th centuries, are built in and among the outcroppings of rock. This
makes Dumbarton one of those "castles" that are really a series of
buildings within a fortified area, rather than the single building that tends
to come to mind when you think of a "castle." I guess when you build
your castle on the top of a 240-foot rock, surrounded on three sides by water,
you can afford to spread out a little bit.
We spent the first day of our Scottish trip in Edinburgh, a very
pleasant city, and the second up by Glasgow (although the only time we spent in
the city, apart from dinner, was at an American football game between the
Scottish Claymores and the Barcelona Dragons—but that's a story for later). We
spent a third day in the Borders—that area southeast of Edinburgh, near the
border with England (duh). It seemed there was a beautiful abbey everywhere we
looked, and this one to the left, Jedburgh Abbey, was one of the most
beautiful. (It's also one of the best known, since Legoland Windsor saw fit to
reproduce it in Lego in the Scottish area of the Lego minitown.) This
12th-century abbey is very well preserved, missing only the roof of the church
and having the foundations of many of the outlying buildings still visible.
It's also one of many monasteries founded by the very well-named King David I
of Scotland.
That same afternoon we not only hit Jedburgh Abbey, we also
stopped at Dryburgh Abbey, where Sir Walter Scott is buried, and this abbey to
the right: Melrose. (Just imagine that as an Aaron Spelling series for a
moment: Melrose Abbey...) Archaeologists are fairly certain that Robert the Bruce's
heart is buried here, and there's a little stone marker outside the church
showing the place. I like this picture because it also shows you some of the
lovely hills in the background. It was on a hill nearby that we enjoyed
"Scott's view," a scenic vista made famous by Sir Walter. Of course,
it seems as if everything in Scotland was made famous by Sir Walter—besides
writing all those historical novels, he said Melrose was most beautiful by
moonlight, although he purportedly never saw it that way.
Another
historical personage we couldn't get away from was Mary, Queen of Scots. For
some reason there were traces of her all over Scotland—even though she grew up
in France, in order to avoid the clutches of Henry VIII, who wanted to lay
claim to the country by marrying his son to her. In Edinburgh Castle we saw the
room where she gave birth to James VI of Scotland (and I of England); in the
town of Jedburgh there was a house where Mary suffered a near-fatal fever; at
Falkland Palace Mary enjoyed hunting and falconry (and perhaps tennis—the 1539
court is supposedly the oldest in the country); at Loch Leven, an island
castle, Mary was held prisoner in 1567 until she agreed to abdicate in favor of
her son. And at this lovely palace to the left, Linlithgow, Mary was born in
1542. So all in all, the areas of Scotland we saw were an interesting mix of
historical and scenic (and sometimes both, as in the hilltop Neolithic cairn
that afforded a spectacular view of the countryside). We hope to have time to
visit the northern areas of Scotland at a later time, and if we do you'll certainly
see it here (eventually).
Copyright © 2000 by Diane Telgen. All rights reserved.