Steve and Kate's Christmas Visit: Dunnottar, Part 2

After making our detour to see the war memorial, we returned to the path leading to Dunnottar. I hadn't meant to wear my Inverness raincoat, and felt just a little bit too much like some kind of Scottish Groupie, but it was the only raincoat I'd brought, and, as always, I was impressed the design of the garment- and I kind of wish I could get away with wearing more often. (Bobbi thought my thermal head band made the look particularly fetching.)

Kate remarked that it was just not possible to take a bad picture as the sun rose over the cliffs and the ruins of the castle-
so we began to compete for the best "BBC shot" (Kate's term)- this is standard shot of a narrator standing in the kind of impossibly verdant craggy landscape that only public television can provide to Americans. I think Steve and Kate probably won this round. Meanwhile, Bobbi found a passage under the castle, and of course, our little spelunker had to go and check it out. By the time we got down there, Bobbi had passed under the foot of the mountain and come out on the other side...but I did get a pretty good shot of her standing in the mouth of the cave.
Emerging from the other side, we were also treated to some great "attacker" angle views of the castle- looking up at the battlements from the slope, it was quite easy to see why this fortress had withstood the assaults of Danish Vikings, Medieval Knights, and the Armies of Cromwell's English Republic during the English Civil war. I would not have wanted the job of scaling cliffs and walls, only to find a stronghold of angry Scots waiting at the top.
For the price of four pounds each, about eight bucks, we were able to spend as much time as we liked crawling around the ruins of this great keep. We took, of course, a ton of pictures. It was hard not to romanticize about the vanished occupants of the buildings, but at the same time- being there on a cold winter's day, it was sobering to think of what conditions might have been like here, surrounded by cold stone by the blustering sea. For the common people employed here, in particular, it must have been little better than living in a cave. We spent hours crawling around the castle- each of us going our own way, and exploring our own nooks and crawl spaces...happy when we met up with each other,exchanging observations and sharing what we'd seen, separating again to follow our own paths. Really, hard to find better vacation companions.

After about 3 hours, we finally posed for the obligatory group picture and then set out down the hill again...headed for the Ship's Inn- for a pint of stout, a plate of Steak and Guinness pie, and some of the best damn sticky toffee pudding the world has ever known.

Life is good.

Steve and Kate's Christmas Visit: Dunnottar, Part 1

Steve and Kate ( of Gourmet Knitting Disaster) and Bobbi and I have been waiting for their visit to the United Kingdom for almost a year- ever since we knew that Bobbi would be sent to London this year.

The visit has come and gone. We had a great time, but it's always a bit of a let down when something you've been waiting for a long time finally comes to pass. First it's imminent, then it's happing, and then, all too soon, it's over. Their trip was like that.

After they arrived, we boarded a train at King's Cross and began a day long trek to the Highlands of Scotland. With his family connection to Clan Keith, Steve had a hankering to see Castle Dunnottar. This magnificent ruined fortress played a role in William Wallace's revolt and withstood a siege by Republican forces in the English Civil War. The Castle was bombarded, but the Hounours of Scotland, that is to say, the crown jewels, were smuggled away from English hands.

The train trip was, in itself, a really amazing journey. Using his new Christmas camera, Steve experimented shooting photos of the English country side as we zipped through. (In fact, many of the photos in this post are his.) As we reached the north, the railway ran right along the shore line, leading to some really impressive views.


We spent the night at a wonderful little bed and breakfast, Beachgate House, in the seaside village of Stonehaven.

The grand thing about visiting Scotland just after Christmas is that, because it is so far north, getting up with the sun is not a difficult thing to do. It doesn't rise until after 8:00 am, even Bobbi and I can manage that. And so, just as the sun crested over the North Sea, we were already breakfasted and heading up the beach.
Gosh- it felt good. (And all before 10am!)


Our host treated us to a very robust breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon, grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, toast, jam, coffee, juice and black pudding after which, we set out for the castle- just two miles up the coast.

Nothing really prepared me for Scotland's beauty- as Steve remarked, he had never really known what it meant to have one's breath taken away until he found he could not breath after saying: "wow", "wow", "wow", "wow" over and over.

The hike to the Castle runs along the high cliffs overlooking the rocky shores, and a little winter mud makes it interesting and slippery enough up there to feel as if you really are doing something slightly brave. Despite the fact that we were in the depths of winter, the grass was still quite green, and the hill sides were populated by rabbits.

About halfway to the Castle, we passed the town's memorial to the dead of the Great War. This amazing structure sits on the top of a rise overlooking the sea, and is visitable for quite some distance in every direction. It's setting and design evokes a vision of the mythical kingdoms of old. I am sure that this was done both as to effort to lend glory to the horrifying struggle and, perhaps, an effort to consign the recent pain to the realm of the past...how could they suspect, when they erected the memorial, that they would have to live through such a conflagration AGAIN in just a generation?


Perhaps it's just overly sentimental, but I found the experience of visiting Scotland to be an odd combination of the familiar and the exotic....the high areas reminded me of New England, the Cliffs over looking the North Sea were like nothing I'd ever seen before. But the odd thing is, it feels a little like home.

Next post: we reach the castle, and Alex continues to fall back upon hackneyed phrases and cliches in attempt to capture an amazing experience.