Exploring Edinburgh and the West Coast
I've been doing quite a bit of exploring the past couple of days, so this combination is a bit odd, but it's basically just what I've been up to this week.
On Sunday night, after a day we all used to catch up on sleep, Nikki and I decided to go on a walk. We were thinking maybe Inverleith Park or Portobello Beach, but in the end we decided to go to Newhaven. When I went on a bus tour of Edinburgh, Newhaven was one of the places I wrote down on a list of things to see again. We decided to walk to Leith and then to Newhaven from there and try to catch the sunset.
I had never really explored Leith much, because I honestly hadn't heard great things about it. On the bus tour, we passed the end of the Waters of Leith, and I thought it was such a nice view, so I got to see another place on my list.
While we were walking to Leith, Nikki told me that the house Mary Queen of Scots stayed in when she first came back to Scotland after being raised in France was in Leith. We decided we'd keep an eye out. When we got to the Waters of Leith, she decided to turn on her data and look it up on Google Maps. It turns out we were only 400 feet away, so of course we went to check it out.
We made our way down towards the water, left Leith and went to Newhaven. While we were only 10 or 20 minutes from Newhaven, the sunset was at its peak and it started to rain, so by the time we made it to Newhaven the sun had set and it was dark, plus we were kind of wet from the rain. We got there, pleased anyway with our discovery in Leith and at how nice the harbor in Newhaven is, so we decided to come back the next day.
We woke up bright and early on Monday morning, because we had already made plans to go to the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It's something I didn't ever get around to doing before, and Nikki has been several times, so she went through it with me and added some historical information that was left out by the audio guide or just other things she's learned in her research.
Probably the most interesting thing that happened there was that Mary Queen of Scots' husband, Darnley, was jealous and manipulated by his advisers and had her secretary killed. Mary was dining with her secretary, David Rizzio, and her inner circle, when her husband and his lords came in and dragged Rizzio out of the dining room into the next room and stabbed him 56 times. I was almost haunted by the blood stains on the wooden floor some 500 years later.
After the tour of the Palace, we looked around the ruined abbey, around which the Palace was built.
Below you can see how the palace was built into the ruins of the abbey.
Then we walked around the gardens and I could not stop admiring the weather we had! It is rarely sunny in Edinburgh, but even more rare is a nearly cloudless day.
After the sunset, Nikki and I were looking over the water about to leave, when an older Scottish woman started talking to us about how nice the sunrises and sunsets are there. We were pleased to have a nice conversation with a stranger, but quickly the woman just started ranting about how her husband left her and married her friend and they took her house, her stuff, and her dog. She talked about that dog for at least 20 minutes. The conversation quickly turned into a monologue. Nikki and I tried to escape the entirely uncomfortable situation, but this woman never took a pause. We eventually did get away and laughed about it on the way back.
When we got back, we went straight to bed, because we had set our alarms for 5 in the morning. The next day, we had booked a tour to the West Coast and the Highlands. It was with the same company that did the tour to Skye. We picked this trip because it went a lot of places we hadn't been to before and it also went through Glencoe, however the trip left from Glasgow. We got up at 5 and left at 6 to get on a bus to Glasgow. Once we got there, I got some coffee, and then we got on the bus to leave for the day.
We drove from Glasgow through the Loch Lomond and the Trossacks National Park. The visibility was a little bit better than the last time I'd been there, but it was still cloudy and misty. I've still yet to see the sun shine on the "bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond."
Our first stop was the "Rest and Be Thankful." It turned out not to be a very thankful place for me at the time. I had recently lost my lens cap the last time I climbed Arthur's Seat, and I had just gotten the replacement in the mail the previous day. When I went to take my first picture at this stop, the lens cap was gone, so I was frantically trying to find it. I didn't find it in my bag or on the ground outside, so I gave up and figured it was gone forever. A few stops later, the couple sitting behind me found it! So I guess I was thankful in the end.
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| no lens cap, hence rain drops all over my lens |
The next stop was Inverary. This was exciting because the castle is currently the residence of the Duke of Argyll, who is the leader of Clan Campbell. My mom's maiden name is Campbell, so if I were to identify with a clan, it would be Clan Campbell (even though these were the Campbells of Argyll and my family were Campbells of Cawdor).
We toured the castle and it was pretty impressive. We only had an hour there, but I felt I could have spent at least three hours there because there was a lot of history about the Campbell Clan.
Above and below are the views from the castle
After we walked through the castle, we walked around the gardens, which were really nice. Unfortunately we didn't have long there before we had to leave.
Our next stop was Kilchurn Castle. We basically just stopped on the side of the road and saw it from there. It's not like a lot of the castles I've been to. It's just ruins that you can explore if you want, but you have to walk from the highway. It was the residence of the Duke of Argyll before it was ruined when a bolt of lightning hit a tower and it collapsed.
One interesting thing Nikki and I noted was that Inverary was built in 1746, which is an extremely important year in Scottish year. It's the year of the Battle of Culloden, which is the last battle of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. After the Scots were defeated in that decisive battle, the English banned the use of the Gaelic language and the wearing of tartan. Anyone suspected of being a Jacobite or a Jacobite sympathizer was imprisoned and executed. We found it very odd that the castle was built in that year, since it was a tumultuous time in Scotland. But then we realized the Campbells were fighting against Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites, and were fighting with the English troops. The Campbells really haven't made a good reputation for themselves, have they?
Back to Kilchurn, I'd really like to go back and walk around the ruins of the castle.
Our next stop was Oban. Nikki and I were really excited to go there. It is such a nice little town on the West Coast. If the day had been nicer, we probably could have seen more of the isles, which are a short boat ride from the harbor in Oban. We actually did see the silhouette of the Isle of Mull, which is part of the Inner Hebrides.
We were starving and craving fish and chips, and that's exactly what we got. A lot of the restaurants in Oban only serve fish caught that day off the coast. I'm not sure if that was the case at the fish and chips shop we went to, but the fish tasted very fresh and we enjoyed it.
After lunch, we didn't have too much time to explore before the bus was going to leave, but we walked along the docks and got some nice views of the water and of the city.
The next stop after Oban was the stop I was the anticipating the most - Glencoe. I have already been there twice. Once in September with my mom and once on the Skye trip. I think it's one of the most beautiful landscapes. You can find similar-looking places all over the Highlands, but I really love this places, especially because my mom and I got to wander around and explore so much when we came in September. So I have many fond memories of going there with people I love and it's so beautiful.
I do sometimes feel a bit guilty loving Glencoe so much. Like I said, I identify as a Campbell. Also, the Campbells haven't made a great name for themselves in Scotland. In 1692, the Campbells took refuge in Clan MacDonald's village in Glencoe. It was the middle of February, so the MacDonald's took them in and fed them and gave them shelter. Part of Highland culture is hospitality and helping anyone who knocks on your door asking for help. The Campbells, who were aligned with King William, the English King. Earlier the King had ordered all the Clan chiefs to come down to London and pledge their allegiance to him. The MacDonalds came, but they were late, which angered the king and gave him a good excuse to made an example of the MacDonalds. The Campbells and the MacDonalds already had a long-standing rivalry with the Campbells, so when the king ordered the Campbells to wipe out the MacDonalds, the Campbells obliged (also having just pledged their allegiance to the king, they had little choice).
This is considered to be the ultimate betrayal, because the Campbells attacked in the middle of the night while they were staying in the homes of the MacDonalds. The Campbells killed all the men. The women and children fled while the Campbells burned down their homes, and the women and children died of exposure in the snow.
In spite of this horrible incident in history, Glencoe remains one of my favorite places in the world.
Our last stop before heading back to Glasgow was Rannoch Moor. I had stopped there on the Skye trip as well, but in a different place. Not to mention in a different season. In April, everything was still a beautiful reddish brown color, but now everything is a vibrant green. Nikki things the word verdurous perfectly described the lush, green color that covers all of Scotland in the summer. In spring, it looked like a completely different planet. Now it looks more like the familiar, green Scottish landscape.
After that stop, the bus took us back to Glasgow. We walked around Glasgow a bit and then got the bus back to Edinburgh. It was an incredibly long day, but very nice. Our guide was very knowledgeable and nice. It was also really fun to spend a whole day with Nikki. We haven't seen each other that much since she's been back, because we've both been traveling. I'm hoping we'll get to spend some more time together in the next couple of days, because she's leaving in less than a week.
The Fringe Festival in Edinburgh started yesterday. Nikki and I are going to a show this afternoon and we have several more shows planned. My next post will probably be about the Fringe among other things.
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