- Scotland: Our Hosts
- 13 Days in Scotland
- Scotland: The Fringe Festival
We spent the majority of our time in Scotland’s charming capital city of Edinburgh, the name of which most definitely contains a silent “g.” Think “Edin-bro,” but say the bro part with your best surfer-dude accent. The city hosts the world’s largest annual arts festival called The Fringe, which celebrated 70 years during our visit. Fellow Austinites, it’s like SXSW on steroids and it runs twice as long. It was absolute madness and all, even our youngest festivalgoer, had an excellent time. Here is a small sampling of The Fringe with more to come in a separate post from Diego — these are his people so he is best suited to tell you all about it.
My Architecture Fix
The Royal Mile is the stretch of the city that leads to Edinburgh Castle, for what would a medieval city be without its castle on a hill? The architecture is an interesting mix of old and new and all of that was very cool, but what most intrigued me about The Royal Mile was what lies beneath it. Before we get to that, check out this collection of sights in beautiful Edinburgh.
It would be hard to miss the exceptionally narrow passageways between the buildings aptly named “closes” (say this as you would say that two people are “close” with an “s” at the end). But even if you don’t notice them, you would surely be curious about their names — Advocate Close, Fleshmarket, Anchor Close, and World’s End Close to name a few. The basic history lesson is simple. The Brits were the Lanisters of the day, and these narrow streets flanked by buildings as tall as ten stories – these closes – together with their proximity to the castle offered the city’s earliest residents some sense of security in light of imminent attack. I imagine that living in the lower levels must have been dismal without any natural light.
So back to what lies beneath The Royal Mile. Sometime in the 17th century, leader-types feared losing trade to Edinburgh’s neighboring New Town so they built a very large, fancy new Royal Exchange where merchants could do business, etc. That building, now called the City Chambers, would be located across from St. Giles Cathedral precisely where several closes already existed. Engineers decided that it would be expensive and wasteful to remove their infrastructure so they devised a way to chop off the top floors and build the exchange on top of the lower floors instead. In some cases, the sort of half-buried houses that remained were still accessible and continued to be used for business until the early 1900’s.
Greyfriars Kirkyard
We also meandered through a couple of really interesting old cemeteries and I thought of my friend Rod who would be hunting for geocaches. It’s his thing. My favorite was Greyfriars Kirkyard (kirkyard is Scottish for church cemetery) famed for a charming story about a Skye Terrier named Bobby who was the loyal companion of an Edinburgh policeman. The story goes that Bobby slept on his master’s gravesite every day for 14 years until he finally passed on himself. There’s a life-sized statue of Bobby built outside the gate of the cemetery where he was also buried, not far from his master. I preferred this story to the incredibly sad inscriptions that mark the burial sites of whole families. Apparently it was common in the 1800s for parents to endure the loss of their children – often several of them. Unimaginable.
A Weekend in the Highlands
Continuing our unlucky streak of Iceland weather, it rained nearly every day we were in Scotland. In fact, I’m pretty sure the ginormous rain cloud from home tethered itself to our car and followed us all the way to the Isle of Skye! It’s still a beautiful time of year to visit Scotland, though. The country is dripping with flowers and the highlands are probably more stunning wet than they would have been dry.
Here’s a smattering of photos from our weekend including a few shots of picturesque Eilean Donan Castle where the final showdown in the movie, Highlander, was filmed. Diego was keen on the bridge where the cinematic decapitation of the immortal warrior, Kurgan, took place. “There can be only one” held his interest until spotting the Ferrari….squirrel. I can’t blame him though. I had a darling little distraction of my own, and I was way more interested in playing with her than I was in jotting the names of some of these places down. I stand by my priorities.
Scotch & a Diego Story
If we’ve been out for a night on the town then you know that I’m a beer and bourbon gal, but when you go digging for bourbon in a Scottish liquor cabinet, you find scotch instead. Um, hold the phones. How have we not met before now, Single Malt Scotch?! You are simply deeee-lish-ous. I endeavored to make up for lost time by finishing Tammy’s bottle. Ha! Perhaps that inspired her next treat – a tour of the Deanston Distillery in Stirling, Scotland.
Aside from thoroughly enjoying a tasting of Deanston’s Scotch paired with fine chocolates made by Scotland’s only chocolatier, I also really enjoyed touring the facility. Rather than yammer on about it, I’ll let Diego’s photos and captions describe the process.
This next photo warrants a bit more explanation by way of a Diego story. This is a Porteus Malt Mill made by the best in the business and used by most of the distilleries throughout Scotland. Milling the barley is the second step of the whiskey making process (after malting and drying the barley) and the first step that Deanston does onsite (they use pre-malted barley). The machine breaks the barley down into husks, grist, and powder in order to maximize the amount of sugar that can be extracted in the mashing process. Sadly, Porteus ran themselves out of business with the undying quality of their machines, which almost never require replacement.
During the tour, Diego asked the guide what happens when one of them breaks. The guide went on to describe a legendary repairman, Ronny, who answers these calls when needed. Apparently Ronny is a sort of last-man-standing story following the demise of Porteus. Diego then asked where the parts come from. The guide smirked a bit as he explained that Ronny gets his parts by breaking into abandoned distilleries and taking what he needs to get the job done. The story was a crowd pleaser to be sure. As the tour group moved on, Diego stayed behind to photograph the mill. And then, because he’s Diego, he walked outside to this photo-op – none other than the man, the legend, Ronny!
Diego enjoyed telling the man of his fame among the tour guides. Ronny chuckled humbly and assured Diego that he was teaching his sons the trade.
Stirling Castle & The Kelpies
Last, but not least, we made it out to Stirling Castle and the Kelpies. Stirling is one of Scotland’s most restored castles so it was quite a treat. The grounds are beautifully maintained and the interior features intricate murals, hand painted walls and ceilings, and impressive tapestries. If you take a peek at the photos below, you will notice a lot of unicorns. Did you know that the unicorn is the official animal of Scotland?! I just love that. We also visited the onsite museum that covers the castle’s extensive history. Sadly, they got the whole part about William Wallace wrong. Perhaps watching Braveheart would clear things up *wink*.
The Kelpies are a monument in Falkirk, Scotland. Bruce had seen them from the road and wanted to explore them more closely. The stunning steel sculptures stand just shy of 100 feet tall and are positioned on either side of a specially designed lock and basin in the new extension to the Fourth and Clyde Canal. They are part of a much larger project called The Helix that’s achieving important things in the community, but I really just wanted to show you the pretty horseys.
Thanks for adventuring with us. Stay tuned for Diego’s post about The Fringe!
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A kelpie is a 7 hit die Neutral Evil fey creature. It can also take the form of a beautiful woman.