Storming the Castle!

Where to start? Our family just got back from a wonderful four-day trip to Scotland that explored old and new friendships, gave me a chance to investigate my heritage and provide my boys with memorable adventures. I'll try to explain.

It all started with Ryanair...we were able to fly return with taxes and levies for just under 500 Euros for the entire family...a superb deal due to the fact that this carrier flies out of and lands in smaller, outlying airports all over the UK and east and west Europe. Rob, an old friend of Matthew's from high school and Queen's met us at Prestwick airport and took us 90 minutes by car to his home east of Edinburgh...we got there just in time for Easter Sunday Lunch of a roast, yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and veggies dolloped with wonderful conversation. Viki, Rob's Scottish wife had laid a groaning table and after dinner we enthusiastically explored the brook and wild terrain behind their Garvald village. Here's a picture of one of my boys and their dog, a terrier named Heidi. That evening we relaxed at their neighbourhood pub for a pint, caught up with news and made plans for the following day.

It was lovely weather (bright, breezy, but cold at 2-4 degrees) when we got up on Monday. Thanks to the internet, we were able to find out that the tide was lowest around 9:30 a.m. so made plans to do some beach combing first at the coast near North Berwick. Rob and Malcolm found a few tiny hermit crabs and Duncan collected limpet and whelk shells, so we weren't disappointed. We also visited a nearby educational-environmental sea bird exhibit that gave us spectacular live-camera views of the volcanic rock-island just off the coast called Bass Rock. It is the home to millions of gannets which are goose-sized sea birds plus a light house and the ruins of a hermit's cottage that for a short time in the 1700's served as a prison. The picture here shows the surface as white, but that isn't because of bird poo, its the birds themselves -- there's that many!

We were feeling the need for sustenance so went into the village for tea and sandwiches. Due to the holiday, it was a very busy place, so instead of exploring the town further, we pushed on to our next adventure, which was "Burwick's Law", the volcanic hill nearby...think of massive croutons floating in your cream of leek and potato soup: this is kind of what these volcanic outcroppings/hills look like from a distance. In these pictures, there's another of these outcropping islands visible both in the shot of the boys sitting on the wall, and from the top of the hill, below.

It was getting much more windy now, but we were all game for the climb. Malcolm was very enthusiastic and made it up the hill in about 40 minutes at a steady clip, closely followed by Viki, pulled to the top by Heidi. Duncan conned Rob into a piggy-back for much of the way, so the youngest was the least winded of us all. Here's a picture of us at the pinnacle: a mere 646 feet above sea level, but still a magnificent view all round. Unfortunately, the infamous whale's jawbone was absent for reconstruction. Some nutty pre-renaissance folk placed it up there, having had the carcass wash ashore and languish in the sun for a season. The wrought-iron barricades were evident, but no bone...too bad. Here's a picture from a website to show you what it might have looked like.

So, just because we weren't quite done yet, we headed to a neighbouring castle (that we could see from the summit, by the way) to see how they used to live in the olden days...and what a sight this was! Tantallon Castle was a living, breathing epi-centre of this coast for hundreds of years until the storming of the castle by Oliver Cromwell's army in 1651. We scoured the site like ants from top to bottom, often experiencing vertigo in the sheer cliff-like fenestrated walls...check out the picture of me looking up from the great hall in the shot below. Also, here's a clip from the website telling you of the history and lore of the place: " Tantallon's origins date back to the ennoblement of William, the First Earl of Douglas in 1358. A later split within the family of the Douglas Earls of Angus left Tantallon under the control of the "Red Douglases", sporadically in conflict with the "Black Douglas" side of the family. And when their ambition grew too rampant or their relations with England too close, they also found themselves repeatedly in conflict with the Scottish Crown." This family was just as un-creative as mine was with their names. The family tree on a plaque showed Margaret married William who gave birth to Angus, Margaret, William, Mary, who married another William and gave birth to George, Margaret, and Agnes and so on...sound familiar, relatives?

Here's a picture of Matthew and I coming out of the Dovecot, a source of food for the castle until their last days. Anyone who has seen our engagement picture will smile at this, as it is a re-creation of a picture we took during our first trip together to Mexico...

As we were exploring this place, I caught an earful of an accent unlike most I had been hearing up to this point. A man in his twenties with an Irish lass was also checking out the castle. I thought he sounded Canadian, but was too shy to ask. Guess who wasn't too shy? You got it. Matthew found out this guy's Canadian hometown (Regina), current living address (Calgary) and reason for travelling in the UK ("just for the crack"...this I found out from Viki is an Irish slang phrase that means convivial conversation...good thing she cleared this up since I only knew drug-heads from Regina when I lived there). He was kind enough to take our picture and here's his contribution to this blog:

So this was enough for the day. Clever Viki had made dough before we left for an easy and welcome pizza that night. The boys and all adults gobbled it up and made sure there were no leftovers. We definitely deserved a good rest that night due to all the walking we did this day. We had more in store, as we had to get up early in order to be ready for our trip into Edinburgh by train to explore the stone buildings of Edinburgh University, interesting graveyards of the city and the famous Kirk of St. Giles...but I'll leave that for another blog, as this has taken me far too long to write as it is! Suffice to say we stomped the same cobblestones both my dad and John Knox trod and felt humbled for the experience. Be sure to check out Matthew's blog of these and our other adventures, from his point of view...the root webpage can be found by clicking here.