Evelyn, being the better driver, is doing the driving first. I want to start in a less populated area. It is a little hard to flip around your thinking for driving on the left side of the road.
We had a beautiful clear day and the scenery was spectacular. Much of it is old villages by the sea. We stopped a couple of time to stretch our legs and to take pictures. You see a lot of sheep and cattle grazing in the broad green fields. To them life must seem pretty good. Of course, they probably don't realize that a nasty surprise is coming to them. That steak I enjoyed so much the night before had probably been enjoying the sun as recently as when we left for England. The farmer or shepherd that takes such good care of them actually doesn't have their best interests in mind.
Our route took us through St. Andrews. You pass by a ruined cathedral. It was started around 1144 and completed in 1318. However, John Knox, who was instrumental in turning the country to Presbyterianism (mostly from St. Giles), gave several discourses against it and cathedrals in general in 1559. It was in large part demolished and its stones taken to be used for secular purposes. This demolition continued into the 1800's. I suppose it is sad, but in its stripped state it is far more dramatic than it must have been even before Knox's attacks. We walked around it in the warm sunlight under the blue sky, taking pictures and reading old gravestones. There are also the ruins of a castle nearby. The castle was built first in 1200 or so and rebuilt two centuries later.
In the 1500s it was besieged by Catholic troops of Scotland and France, after it was used as the stronghold of the murderers of Cardinal Beaton.
Most of the day was spent driving. We did stop at three ancient sites and saw three souterrains. They dated to about 1000 AD and were sort of dug-out houses. They looked very much like World War I trenches except that the sides were shored up by rocks. At deepest they were only waist- or at most shoulder-deep.
The first souterrain was behind somebody's barnyard. Apparently the Department of Environment sells all but a small radius around the site to a farmer, but the farmer must keep access to the site open to the public. The Tealing Souterrain is just a sort of crescent. Like the other two we saw, it is currently roofless. It is perhaps less spectacular than Stonehenge, but it is certainly less commercialized. It may get visited maybe once a week (as a wild guess). The Carlungie and Ardestie Souterrains are about a mile apart. The Carlungie takes you right through a field where oats are grown. There is a path about a foot wide giving access to a narrow pull-off on the road. Both of these souterrains are somewhat more complex---roughly the complexity of a Japanese ideogram. These souterrains were each used by Picts in the First to Third century AD. Usually these souterrains would have stone roofs and would be lit by torches. In this climate they could probably get pretty cold.
By the time we finished with the souterrains there was not a lot of time to see Glamis Castle. It might have been one of the better castles. But we will be seeing several castles in the days to come.
Instead, we continued on to Perth, where we had reservations for the night. Evelyn drove and I re-wrote and expanded my PHANTOM OF THE OPERA review. Much of the day we listened to it on the car's cassette player.
We found the Tourist Centre in Perth and made reservations for Inverness. A restaurant had a good-looking menu there so we found it in town. We walked around to see if there was something better. There wasn't. So we went to the Grill. Unfortunately, we had to order off their high tea menu because we got there before 6:30 PM. Neither of us particularly liked what we got.
We found our B&B, the Jacaranda, and were in for the night. We both wrote most of the evening. At some time the husband of the woman who ran the B&B came home--apparently angry about something. Well, none of our business.
September 5: We woke up about 7 this morning and had breakfast about 8 AM. This gave us some chance to talk to the woman who ran the B&B. She'd seen jacaranda trees in Africa and Australia and liked the color, so that was the name she gave the hotel.
A little after 9 AM we headed for Scone Palace. We got there about 9:20. had to wait about ten minutes until it opened, then went in. For several hundred years, up through the crowning of James VI in the late 16th Century, kings of Scotland were crowned at Scone and for more than 500 years it was the seat of the Stone of Scone. At the Stone and only at this Stone may a king of Scotland be crowned. In 1296 Edward I moved the Stone to Westminster Abbey as a move to control the Scots. Legend had it that this was the Jacob's Pillow of the Bible. Where the Stone really came from nobody is sure but it may have been holy to the Picts or the Belgic Kings. In any case, the mere fact that the Stone was at Scone (and may still be) hasn't done too much for the fortunes of the residents of Scone Palace. The Earls of Mansfield, who have fallen on hard times, moved to the second floor and let tourists see the first floor for a fee. (Oh, why do I say the Stone may still be at Scone? One of the legends say that Edward I got a counterfeit. The real Stone may be hidden somewhere at Scone. I happen to think the real Stone is hidden inside the Maltese Falcon, but that's another story.) In any case, the Earls of Mansfield love in a modest castle near Perth. The Earl is William David Mungo James who is considered the 8th and 7th Earl of Mansfield. Why both? Well, his father, Mungo David Malcolm, was the 7th and 6th Earl of Mansfield. I am not sure I have figured out the double numbering, but I figure that somewhere in the family tree something dirty happened that people would rather not talk about.
I have lost a lot of respect for myself this trip. Well, some anyway. I though I was interested in seeing castles. Well, I've discovered that a lot of seeing castles is looking at dishes trimmed in gold with pretty artwork, or chairs that are oh-so-nicely upholstered, or how ornate a ceiling is. This aspect of castlewatching is just not for me. What I want to see in castles are guns and swords and dungeons. I like artwork with mythological beasts. I'd rather look at the kitchen than the beautifully appointed drawing room. I don't want to see how people lived in luxury; I want to see how they dreamed and killed. I am hardly going to be impressed by all the gold people surrounded themselves with if they didn't even have indoor plumbing. My house in New Jersey is more luxurious than most castles I've seen.
The lands of Scone Palace originally belonged to the Earl of Gowrie. David Murray, a forebear of the present Earl of Mansfield, was just passing by the lands when he heard King James VI shouting from the tower. It would seem someone in the Gowrie family was trying to kill him. David ran into the fray, sword drawn, and suddenly the lands were his, a gift from a grateful King.
From there we went to the Moot Hill Chapel over by the former resting place of the Stone of Scone. There we read how the king of the Picts, King Droston, together with his nobles, was invited to a banquet by Kenneth MacAlpine, a Scot. They all got drunk and when the Picts were good and drunk, MacAlpine pulled the bolts out of the benches and they turned into traps that held the Picts until they could be slaughtered. Beware of Scots bearing drink.
The weather was rainy and ugly, so after a quick look at the castle graveyard, we set out for world-famous Pitlochry and Queen's View, a lovely view of mountains and river. Only it wasn't a beautiful view--it was darn dismal in the rain. So we continued to Blair Castle.
Now this is what people think of when they think of Scottish castles. The walls are decorated with thousands of guns, hundreds of elk skulls, hundreds of knives, swords, pikes, etc., etc. Not that I approve of sport hunting, which someone here was obviously into, but at least guns are more interesting than upholstery. This castle is full of old musical instruments, pictures of famous people, miniatures of buildings, costumes, and more guns. It tells you more about an age and less about one family's rich lifestyle. It has tea services, but it also has suits of armor. It also is the home of Europe's only remaining private army, the Atholl Highlanders, though what anyone needs with a private army is beyond army.
When we finished with Blair, the sun had come out and Evelyn suggested we give Queen's View another try now that you don't have to stand in two inches of water to see a water-logged vista. This time it was an impressive sight. We took a few pictures and then headed to Drumnadrochit, where our evening's lodgings were. Drumnadrochit is a bedroom suburb of Inverness, with a bustling population of nearly 400 people and nearly three restaurants.
We were interested in staying in or near Inverness and we ended up in Drumnadrochit, which turns out to be the Loch Ness capital of the world. Which is to say that this is the pretty end of the Loch and the touristy stuff connected with the Loch is around here. Evelyn is more interested in the Loch Ness Monster than I am. I know it is all a plot to drum up tourism. I'd like to believe in real monsters but I really don't. But the museum of Loch Ness is convenient so we will probably go. We are on a one-car-wide street here. We checked in, worked on our logs for a while, found a place to eat it Inverness (I had haddock and chips), then it was back to the room to write. It is now 10:11 PM on September 5, 1987, and for the first time in quite a while I am caught up in this log.
September 6 (7:32 AM): Ah, friends, what can I tell you? It is part of the human condition to discover that that which looks good is often bad, that which looks bad is often good. One cannot trust appearances. Yet if appearances cannot be trusted, what can be? This appeared to be a very modern bed and breakfast with all modern conveniences. It could have been built in the last five years. Well, I woke up a little cold. As you may know, in Europe buildings are kept a bit cooler than in the United States and the economical Scots keep their houses doubly so. But right outside our room there is a bathroom with a shower. A nice warm shower was all I needed. A warm shower is a luxury in much of Britain. Most places have bathtubs. In fact, I have yet to see a sink that has one faucet rather than one for hot and one for cold. I am told that the British say that mixers on faucets have not been perfected yet. Presumably when science figures how to put a single faucet on a sink and mix the water so we don't have hot parts and cold parts of the stream (which endanger the user by scalding him when he touches the wrong part of the stream), then the Britons will jump en masse on the one-faucet bandwagon. (We now have super-conductors you can stir your tea with, but the single faucet sink remains an unattainable goal and a puzzle to science.)
So here I am, anxiously awaiting my warm shower. The water is regulated by a Triton T-80, a fancy-looking electrical device that has one electrical dial for temperature of water, a second for amount of flow. Funny, I didn't think that electrical equipment and water mixed really well, but there it was staring me in the face. The chill was added to by the fact that I was dressed for the shower. I won't go into that in detail, but I think the reader gets the point. I reach out and turn the dial for water. It clicks into place. I wait shivering for the warm water expectantly. And wait. Not a sound. I turn the switch again. Silence. The power light remains out. I start frantically looking all over the Triton T-80 to find some sign that I have done something wrong that I can yet do right. My hands shivering from the cold, I look and feel over the sleek body of the Triton T-80 in the hopes of finding a hidden switch. Nothing. Inside I know it's all over, but I go through the motions of twiddling the only two knobs that the Triton T-80 afforded me. Nothing and soon even the hands gave up hope. Shivering, I went over to the sink and started to brush my teeth. |
