On the Move - Scotland
Jul. 19th, 2001 02:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetMy parents-in-law, Steve and Trish Merrill, came to spend a few weeks with us and we decided to rent a car and see some of the north of England and Scotland. Unfortunately, I came down with a cold and it was still lingering on the day we were scheduled to depart, so Jason and his parents headed north without me. I've asked Jason to report on the first three days of their trip:
My father, Steve, and I picked up their rental car--a burgundy Vauxhall Vectra four-door sedan--at the National office near King's Cross on the morning of Thursday 29 March. After a brief stop back at the house to load the car and have some leftovers for lunch, the three of us headed north, leaving Elizabeth to recover from her cold and catch up with us by train.
Our first stop was at Lincoln Castle, where we were surprised to find one of the three remaining original copies of the Magna Carta. We visited the beautiful Lincoln Cathedral and stayed for part of the evensong service, with a choir of men and girls singing antiphonally. Just inside the cathedral was a small chapel to Mary Magdalene that gave me a strong feeling of holiness, and as we wandered around, I noticed several people slipping in to pray there and back out into the world. The churchyard contained a statue of Tennyson.
We had a nice dinner at Brown's Pie Shop. My mother, Trish, had an amazing salmon en croute with pink peppercorns, Steve had their "best beef pie" and I enjoyed their rabbit pie with scrumpy (cider). For dessert we split a strawberry creme brulee and a bread & butter pudding.
After our meal we piled back in the car, called York to find a b&b, and drove up, getting into the Queen Anne Guest House(?) shortly after 10. They put me in a room that wasn't quite ready for guests--it had a bed, but no sink, and wasn't decorated at all--but we were happy to find the space to sleep.
On Friday we drove on to Pickering where we were amused by a chatty docent at Pickering Castle who was very happy to tell us her thoughts on Tony Blair and the recent hoof & mouth outbreak, and encourage us to visit *all* of the local attractions. We also visited St. Mary's church, which boasts wall paintings from the Norman era that are extremely well-preserved, due to having been painted over (rather than destroyed) by Cromwell's troops. We drove on through the moors to Durham, where we got lunch at a pub and toured their cathedral, which boasts the highest bell tower in the world, a lovely cloister, and the tomb and relics of St. Cuthbert, in addition to many interesting smaller features. In the churchyard I found an old tombstone I had to have a picture of: "Here lieth the body of Mrs. Elizabeth Hunter, born at medumsley, who dyed May 10 1748 in ye 80th year of her Age". Not bad for the 18th century, I thought. Durham Castle is still around, but now serves as student housing.
We spent the night in the lovely Cathedral View b&b and had dinner at the Raj Pooth Indian restaurant. The food was reasonably good, but service was a little confusing. Despite the mostly empty dining room, they seated us in the waiting area and gave us menus. After a few minutes, a woman came and took our drink order, and then brought us our drinks. Then a man came and took our food order. Then another man seated us right next to the other two full tables. When we wanted our drinks refilled, our waiter had to get the woman to deal with that--apparently a strong division of labor is in effect.
On Saturday we set out to see Hadrian's Wall. Most of the sites along it are closed because of the outbreak, but we were able to visit Vindolanda, which doesn't require visitors to walk across pasture. The complex there includes various excavated ruins, some reconstructions, and a museum with artifact displays. They also have a small flock of sheep (fenced off) like those they believe the Romans would have had--much smaller and browner than the English sheep of today. The docent there was saying that their ongoing archeological work is going to be set back due to the considerable decrease in funds because tourism is so far down this year. They usually get a lot of school groups in the spring, but they've all cancelled now. The weather was atrocious when we first got there; the StormShield umbrella Elizabeth gave me for Christmas got its first real test, and was found worthy. But by the time we came out of the museum a couple of hours later, it had cleared up and was lovely for the rest of the day.
We then drove out to Lindisfarne (or Holy Island) and visited the ruins of the priory founded there by St. Aidan. The island is connected to the main coast by a narrow causeway that floods at high tide, but fortunately that wasn't until long after we left. The village there feels very friendly and open--the parking attendant apologized that the state-run attractions such as the castle wouldn't open until the next day--and I was sorry that we had to run off after only about half an hour. But then, I'm a sucker for coastal villages. We made it into Edinburgh just after four and met Elizabeth at the Waverly Street Station. It was very good to see her again!
That morning I took the 9am train out of King's Cross to Edinburgh, getting in about 1:30pm. I checked my luggage at the station and walked across the park, past the enormous monument to Walter Scott. It looks like a hollow Gothic church steeple, with a statue of the man and his dog in the center. One of my guide books claims that it's colloquially known as "The Scott Rocket" and you can really see why. I visited the National Gallery of Scotland, which is a small but high quality collection. I especially enjoyed their recently restored Botticelli's Madonna and Child and a portrait of Lady Agnew by John Singer Sargent. It was nice to be able to see the whole place in just a couple of hours, though I was unable to get to the three other galleries that house sections of the collection. After the museum, I took pictures of the Royal Scottish Academy, across from the gallery and then wandered a ways down Princes Street and saw the outside of St. Cuthbert's church and the lovely park that used to be a loch at the base of the castle rock. I spent some time there trying to get a good shot of the upper section of town and the castle, before heading back toward the station.
I collected my bag and met the others at the station just after 4pm. We parked the car and wandered around New Town (built in the early 18th century) for a bit before stopping for an early dinner at La Taverna. Despite one of the guidebook's high praise, we had a fairly mediocre meal. Our starters (bruschetta and deep fried mushrooms stuff with cheese) were both good and our desserts (tiramisu and pavlova) were quite nice, but our mains (seafood risotto, penne with tomato & basil, and two different treatments of boneless chicken breasts) were fairly lackluster.
We were all tired when dinner was over, so we went straight to the Dunedin b&b where Trish had made reservations and checked into our rooms. I was asleep by about 8:30pm. It was a lovely place, with much of the detailing original to the 19th century house and a garden of heathers in front. Unfortunately, the beds were not very comfortable. Our breakfast the next morning was good: our choice of juices, cereals, yogurt, fruit, eggs, meats, tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, coffee and teas, freshly made to order.
Leaving the car parked at the b&b, we took a bus into Old Town and walked up to Edinburgh Castle, peering into shops and closes (little mews or alleys between buildings) along the way. Much more than a single castle, Edinburgh Castle is an agglomeration of buildings and defensive walls built on a spur of volcanic basalt from the 12th through the 19th century. They have a very good audio tour that allows you to select information on different sections of the complex as you go, and to choose more information on topics of particular interest. It was interesting to see all the different parts, including the National War Museum of Scotland and the Regimental Museum of the Scots Greys. The tiny St. Margaret's Chapel, the oldest extant building on the rock, is lovely. We enjoyed seeing the Honors of Scotland, the crown, sceptre and sword of the Stuart kings, as well as the Stone of Destiny (or Stone of Scone) returned to Scotland in 1996 after seven hundred years in Westminster Abbey. We also toured the royal apartments and saw the room where Mary, Queen of Scots, gave birth to James VI, who would become James I of England. Our favorite building was the Scottish National War Memorial, a chapel in the Upper Square commemorating all the Scots who've died in foreign wars. The views from the castle are also quite amazing, looking out at Arthur's Seat or across the city to the folly on Calton Hill or over the Firth of Forth to Fife. Because we were there on Sunday we didn't hear the "one o'clock guns" that are fired at that hour every other day of the week.
After the castle, we wandered down the Royal Mile and stopped for a reasonable pub lunch at Deacon Brodie's. He was supposedly Robert Louis Stevenson's inspiration for Jekyll & Hyde, a member of the Town Council who became a burglar to support his liking for gambling and women and was eventually hanged on the gallows he'd designed for the city. From there we walked on down the hill, past the cathedral of St. Giles and the construction site of the new Scottish House of Parliament, to Holyrood Palace, built on the grounds of the Augustinian Abbey of Holyrood. The ruins of the abbey are adjacent to the palace. Most of the abbey was completely destroyed, but the walls of the nave are still standing. We wandered through both of those and the gardens of the palace, admiring the spring flowers and the excellent view of Arthur's Seat. Leaving Holyrood, we walked past the new science museum, Our Dynamic Earth, and up Cowgate to the Grassmarket area, on the south side of the castle. We hung out in a pub there, hoping to take the literary pub walk that was advertised, but it turned out that expecting them to start the April schedule on April 1st was too much to ask.
So instead of a pub crawl, we wandered up to see the Castle by night and along Bow Street, checking out the several nice restaurants there, and ended up at Maison Bleue for an excellent meal. I had the seafood bisque, while the others shared fried calamari with roasted peppers and goat cheese & jalapeno fritters. Steve's steak au poivre, Trish's pan-fried salmon and my chicken supreme in mustard sauce were all quite good, but Jason was quite disappointed by the heavy anise flavor of his tuna steak and sent it back in exchange for another salmon fillet. For dessert we split a fruit mousse tart and a heavenly nougat with cream and then wandered back down the Royal Mile to the bus that would take us back to Dunedin for the night.
After another hearty breakfast, we headed out of the city on Monday morning. Our first stop was Stirling, where we toured the castle complex. Another long-time seat of Scottish royalty, overlooking the sites of seven key battles, the complex includes works from the 12th century through to the 18th century. We wandered through the grounds a bit on our own, touring the royal apartments in the Renaissance residence of James V and the hall there with its trompe l'oeuil ceiling, and then took the guided tour. Led by a redhead with a strong Scots accent, it was a good tour of the highlights of the complex, including the defensive walls and the recently restored Great Hall and Chapel Royal. Stirling Castle is the traditional headquarters of the Argyll & Sutherland Highland Regiment and was used as their barracks until the 1960's, during which time the hall was substantially altered. It has now been restored to what they think it looked like when it was built in the early 13th century, complete with minimal furnishings appropriate to the time, the windows have been reopened, and the hammerbeam roof has been reconstructed. The outside of the hall is particularly shocking...it has been renovated and washed with lime in such a way to make it "King's Gold," a peach color that seems more suited to Italy than Scotland, though our guide assured us that all of the buildings would have appeared thus around the time they were built. After a walk through the reconstructed Great Kitchens, we left the castle and wandered back down the hill through the churchyard of the parish church next to the castle, where there were interesting monuments, statuary and headstones. We stopped for lunch at the Darnley Cafe and had delicious carrot & parsnip soup with our toasties.
We picked up the car, which we had parked at the mall at the bottom of the hill, and continued northwest across Scotland. We passed through Rannoch Moor with its looming mountains and rushing waterfalls to Glen Coe and drove all around Loch Leven, then out to the shores of Loch Linnhe. We decided to drive the 20 miles or so north to Ft. William before heading south to Oban for the night. In Ft. William we saw Neptune's Staircase, a series of locks that raise the level of the Caledonian Canal 64 feet in about a quarter mile. From there we could look back at the slopes of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain range in Scotland.
We began heading south, planning to check into our b&b and find dinner in Oban, but a few miles south of Ft. William traffic was stopped and a police officer explained that there had been a very serious accident and the road would be closed for at least two or three hours. He suggested that we head back to Ft. William, have dinner and try again. Steve had noticed a place along the loch, so we went there. We were sorry to be driven there by tragedy, but we had a wonderful time at The Crannog. Built on a pier out over the water, the dining room gave us a beautiful view, first of the sunset and then the developing storm that resulted in huge waves. We all split half a dozen oysters and then Steve had the smoked trout & horseradish pate, Jason had some of the sweetest mussels we'd ever tasted, in a garlicky butter sauce, and I had the cullen skink, a chowder of cream, potatoes and smoked haddock that was a real treat. Jason and Trish both had thelangoustines, which are enormous crayfish, while Steve had the halibut with asparagus and cream sauce, and I had thin fillets of sole and trout. For dessert, Steve & Trish split the creme brulee, while I talked Jason into sharing the cheese plate and a glass of muscat dessert wine. Throughout the meal we'd been hearing that the road might not open before midnight, and one of the other diners said that she'd offered her services as a nurse and been told that the occupants of the cars were all dead--it sounds like at least two cars went off the road into the water. We were just about to start looking for a place to stay in Ft. William when the hostess came to the table to say that the road had opened, so we were able to get on our way. It was slow going on one lane past the accident site--where we couldn't see anything but tow trucks--but once we'd weathered that, it was smooth sailing down to Oban through a dark and stormy night. We found Barriemore House, out on the pier looking over the harbor and were treated to two of the loveliest rooms I've ever had in a b&b. The beds were comfortable and the bathrooms were palatial and when we woke in the morning, the view across the harbor was stunning. The only problem was that a window had been left open all evening, so the room itself was quite cold--watching Jason run to the bathroom in the middle of the night in his parka was a treat.
Our breakfast in the morning was similar to the one at Dunedin, but our choices also included kippers and smoked haddock, the latter of which both Trish and Jason ordered. After breakfast we drove up to an overlook point, where we could see all of Oban Bay, and then visited their tourist information center.
The weather throughout our trip was astonishing. Despite having grown up in the Northeast, I don't think I've ever experienced such consistently variable weather. Even when we weren't moving around, it went from bright sunshine to grey overcast to rain to sleet and back again in the space of half an hour and when we were travelling, it was a different day around every bend in the road, it seemed. I was changing my glasses every ten minutes the whole trip and we saw some stunning clouds.
From Oban we drove down through Kilmartin Glen and stopped at the nifty museum there. Kilmartin has one of the largest concentrations of pre-historic sites in the world: standing stones, cairns, hillforts, crannogs, and carvings. We had a very nice lunch at the glass-enclosed cafe in the beautiful stone building of the museum, looking out on a field containing one of the cairns. After lunch we drove around the area. Most of the sites are closed, due to concern about spreading hoof-and-mouth among the livestock, but we could see some of them from the road and one was open so we could climb up the hill to see the cup-and-ring carvings on the exposed rock and admire the view.
We drove on down the west side of Loch Lomond to Glasgow. We had planned to stay there that night, but were unable to find a hotel room, due to two large conventions being in town at the same time. So we drove back to Edinburgh (about 40 miles away) and stayed at the Amaragua Guest House. We had a lovely dinner at Petit Paris in the Grassmarket--my appetizer of smoked salmon and asparagus in beurre blanc was especially good.
On Wednesday morning, Trish & Steve dropped Jason and me off at the train station. They headed south by car while we took the train back to Glasgow. We visited the cathedral there, where we walked in on a performance in the nave by the orchestra, jazz ensemble and show choir from the American School in Stuttgart. After wandering around the cathedral for a while, admiring the stained glass windows and the gorgeous choir screen and ceiling and seeing the tomb--decorated with finely crafted tapestries and a "painting" of dried flowers--and shrine to St. Mungo in the crypt--which also had some interesting windows--and the Blackadder Aisle chapel, we walked up the hill to the Necropolis, a very interesting cemetary crowned with a monument to John Knox that looks out over the city, as well as many other ornate structures and graves. Once back down the hill, we visited the St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life. Its exhibits are odd--they have the flavor of explaining religion to someone who knows nothing whatsoever about it. In addition to some lovely artifacts from various of the major world religions, they house Dali's "Christ of St. John of the Cross."
Leaving there, we walked through the Merchant City section of town and grabbed lunch at the food court in St. Enoch's mall while calling around to see if it would be possible to get a room that night in Glasgow. No luck there, so we made reservations back in Edinburgh and then went to the Gallery of Modern Art. We very much enjoyed their collection of extremely contemporary works--most by living artists--and especially enjoyed our discovery of Patrick Hughes' work.
Taking the train back to Edinburgh, we checked into the Hotel Ibis and had a nap. For dinner we walked up the Royal Mile to The Witchery. We had a wonderful meal in the dark warmth of their Secret Garden room, one of the most atmospheric dining rooms of my experience. My steak tartare with quails egg was excellent and Jason's seafood pie was quite tasty, though heavy on the potatoes.
On Thursday we once again took the train to Glasgow and headed via the obviously-built-in-the-seventies underground (the tunnels say "Ride the Train of Soul and Spirit") to the West End of the city. We visited the Hunterian Art Gallery, which includes reconstructed interiors from one of the homes which Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife lived in and altered extensively. Their collection also includes several rooms of works by Whistler, who left them the contents of his studio when he died, so many of the works are unfinished to some degree. From there we walked down past some lovely gardens to the Kelvingrove Museum. Much of the museum is dedicated to natural history, but they do have several galleries of paintings, including a lovely Burne-Jones painting of Danae and George Henry's "Japanese Woman with a Fan." At both galleries we had the opportunity to become more familiar with the Glasgow Boys and the Glasgow Colorists, two different schools of local artists.
We headed back downtown and had a late lunch at Pizza Express before catching our train at Central Station for London. The trip took about six hours, most of which we spent reading through the two movie magazines I'd picked up in the station. We made it home about 11:30pm.
My father, Steve, and I picked up their rental car--a burgundy Vauxhall Vectra four-door sedan--at the National office near King's Cross on the morning of Thursday 29 March. After a brief stop back at the house to load the car and have some leftovers for lunch, the three of us headed north, leaving Elizabeth to recover from her cold and catch up with us by train.
Our first stop was at Lincoln Castle, where we were surprised to find one of the three remaining original copies of the Magna Carta. We visited the beautiful Lincoln Cathedral and stayed for part of the evensong service, with a choir of men and girls singing antiphonally. Just inside the cathedral was a small chapel to Mary Magdalene that gave me a strong feeling of holiness, and as we wandered around, I noticed several people slipping in to pray there and back out into the world. The churchyard contained a statue of Tennyson.
We had a nice dinner at Brown's Pie Shop. My mother, Trish, had an amazing salmon en croute with pink peppercorns, Steve had their "best beef pie" and I enjoyed their rabbit pie with scrumpy (cider). For dessert we split a strawberry creme brulee and a bread & butter pudding.
After our meal we piled back in the car, called York to find a b&b, and drove up, getting into the Queen Anne Guest House(?) shortly after 10. They put me in a room that wasn't quite ready for guests--it had a bed, but no sink, and wasn't decorated at all--but we were happy to find the space to sleep.
On Friday we drove on to Pickering where we were amused by a chatty docent at Pickering Castle who was very happy to tell us her thoughts on Tony Blair and the recent hoof & mouth outbreak, and encourage us to visit *all* of the local attractions. We also visited St. Mary's church, which boasts wall paintings from the Norman era that are extremely well-preserved, due to having been painted over (rather than destroyed) by Cromwell's troops. We drove on through the moors to Durham, where we got lunch at a pub and toured their cathedral, which boasts the highest bell tower in the world, a lovely cloister, and the tomb and relics of St. Cuthbert, in addition to many interesting smaller features. In the churchyard I found an old tombstone I had to have a picture of: "Here lieth the body of Mrs. Elizabeth Hunter, born at medumsley, who dyed May 10 1748 in ye 80th year of her Age". Not bad for the 18th century, I thought. Durham Castle is still around, but now serves as student housing.
We spent the night in the lovely Cathedral View b&b and had dinner at the Raj Pooth Indian restaurant. The food was reasonably good, but service was a little confusing. Despite the mostly empty dining room, they seated us in the waiting area and gave us menus. After a few minutes, a woman came and took our drink order, and then brought us our drinks. Then a man came and took our food order. Then another man seated us right next to the other two full tables. When we wanted our drinks refilled, our waiter had to get the woman to deal with that--apparently a strong division of labor is in effect.
On Saturday we set out to see Hadrian's Wall. Most of the sites along it are closed because of the outbreak, but we were able to visit Vindolanda, which doesn't require visitors to walk across pasture. The complex there includes various excavated ruins, some reconstructions, and a museum with artifact displays. They also have a small flock of sheep (fenced off) like those they believe the Romans would have had--much smaller and browner than the English sheep of today. The docent there was saying that their ongoing archeological work is going to be set back due to the considerable decrease in funds because tourism is so far down this year. They usually get a lot of school groups in the spring, but they've all cancelled now. The weather was atrocious when we first got there; the StormShield umbrella Elizabeth gave me for Christmas got its first real test, and was found worthy. But by the time we came out of the museum a couple of hours later, it had cleared up and was lovely for the rest of the day.
We then drove out to Lindisfarne (or Holy Island) and visited the ruins of the priory founded there by St. Aidan. The island is connected to the main coast by a narrow causeway that floods at high tide, but fortunately that wasn't until long after we left. The village there feels very friendly and open--the parking attendant apologized that the state-run attractions such as the castle wouldn't open until the next day--and I was sorry that we had to run off after only about half an hour. But then, I'm a sucker for coastal villages. We made it into Edinburgh just after four and met Elizabeth at the Waverly Street Station. It was very good to see her again!
That morning I took the 9am train out of King's Cross to Edinburgh, getting in about 1:30pm. I checked my luggage at the station and walked across the park, past the enormous monument to Walter Scott. It looks like a hollow Gothic church steeple, with a statue of the man and his dog in the center. One of my guide books claims that it's colloquially known as "The Scott Rocket" and you can really see why. I visited the National Gallery of Scotland, which is a small but high quality collection. I especially enjoyed their recently restored Botticelli's Madonna and Child and a portrait of Lady Agnew by John Singer Sargent. It was nice to be able to see the whole place in just a couple of hours, though I was unable to get to the three other galleries that house sections of the collection. After the museum, I took pictures of the Royal Scottish Academy, across from the gallery and then wandered a ways down Princes Street and saw the outside of St. Cuthbert's church and the lovely park that used to be a loch at the base of the castle rock. I spent some time there trying to get a good shot of the upper section of town and the castle, before heading back toward the station.
I collected my bag and met the others at the station just after 4pm. We parked the car and wandered around New Town (built in the early 18th century) for a bit before stopping for an early dinner at La Taverna. Despite one of the guidebook's high praise, we had a fairly mediocre meal. Our starters (bruschetta and deep fried mushrooms stuff with cheese) were both good and our desserts (tiramisu and pavlova) were quite nice, but our mains (seafood risotto, penne with tomato & basil, and two different treatments of boneless chicken breasts) were fairly lackluster.
We were all tired when dinner was over, so we went straight to the Dunedin b&b where Trish had made reservations and checked into our rooms. I was asleep by about 8:30pm. It was a lovely place, with much of the detailing original to the 19th century house and a garden of heathers in front. Unfortunately, the beds were not very comfortable. Our breakfast the next morning was good: our choice of juices, cereals, yogurt, fruit, eggs, meats, tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, coffee and teas, freshly made to order.
Leaving the car parked at the b&b, we took a bus into Old Town and walked up to Edinburgh Castle, peering into shops and closes (little mews or alleys between buildings) along the way. Much more than a single castle, Edinburgh Castle is an agglomeration of buildings and defensive walls built on a spur of volcanic basalt from the 12th through the 19th century. They have a very good audio tour that allows you to select information on different sections of the complex as you go, and to choose more information on topics of particular interest. It was interesting to see all the different parts, including the National War Museum of Scotland and the Regimental Museum of the Scots Greys. The tiny St. Margaret's Chapel, the oldest extant building on the rock, is lovely. We enjoyed seeing the Honors of Scotland, the crown, sceptre and sword of the Stuart kings, as well as the Stone of Destiny (or Stone of Scone) returned to Scotland in 1996 after seven hundred years in Westminster Abbey. We also toured the royal apartments and saw the room where Mary, Queen of Scots, gave birth to James VI, who would become James I of England. Our favorite building was the Scottish National War Memorial, a chapel in the Upper Square commemorating all the Scots who've died in foreign wars. The views from the castle are also quite amazing, looking out at Arthur's Seat or across the city to the folly on Calton Hill or over the Firth of Forth to Fife. Because we were there on Sunday we didn't hear the "one o'clock guns" that are fired at that hour every other day of the week.
After the castle, we wandered down the Royal Mile and stopped for a reasonable pub lunch at Deacon Brodie's. He was supposedly Robert Louis Stevenson's inspiration for Jekyll & Hyde, a member of the Town Council who became a burglar to support his liking for gambling and women and was eventually hanged on the gallows he'd designed for the city. From there we walked on down the hill, past the cathedral of St. Giles and the construction site of the new Scottish House of Parliament, to Holyrood Palace, built on the grounds of the Augustinian Abbey of Holyrood. The ruins of the abbey are adjacent to the palace. Most of the abbey was completely destroyed, but the walls of the nave are still standing. We wandered through both of those and the gardens of the palace, admiring the spring flowers and the excellent view of Arthur's Seat. Leaving Holyrood, we walked past the new science museum, Our Dynamic Earth, and up Cowgate to the Grassmarket area, on the south side of the castle. We hung out in a pub there, hoping to take the literary pub walk that was advertised, but it turned out that expecting them to start the April schedule on April 1st was too much to ask.
So instead of a pub crawl, we wandered up to see the Castle by night and along Bow Street, checking out the several nice restaurants there, and ended up at Maison Bleue for an excellent meal. I had the seafood bisque, while the others shared fried calamari with roasted peppers and goat cheese & jalapeno fritters. Steve's steak au poivre, Trish's pan-fried salmon and my chicken supreme in mustard sauce were all quite good, but Jason was quite disappointed by the heavy anise flavor of his tuna steak and sent it back in exchange for another salmon fillet. For dessert we split a fruit mousse tart and a heavenly nougat with cream and then wandered back down the Royal Mile to the bus that would take us back to Dunedin for the night.
After another hearty breakfast, we headed out of the city on Monday morning. Our first stop was Stirling, where we toured the castle complex. Another long-time seat of Scottish royalty, overlooking the sites of seven key battles, the complex includes works from the 12th century through to the 18th century. We wandered through the grounds a bit on our own, touring the royal apartments in the Renaissance residence of James V and the hall there with its trompe l'oeuil ceiling, and then took the guided tour. Led by a redhead with a strong Scots accent, it was a good tour of the highlights of the complex, including the defensive walls and the recently restored Great Hall and Chapel Royal. Stirling Castle is the traditional headquarters of the Argyll & Sutherland Highland Regiment and was used as their barracks until the 1960's, during which time the hall was substantially altered. It has now been restored to what they think it looked like when it was built in the early 13th century, complete with minimal furnishings appropriate to the time, the windows have been reopened, and the hammerbeam roof has been reconstructed. The outside of the hall is particularly shocking...it has been renovated and washed with lime in such a way to make it "King's Gold," a peach color that seems more suited to Italy than Scotland, though our guide assured us that all of the buildings would have appeared thus around the time they were built. After a walk through the reconstructed Great Kitchens, we left the castle and wandered back down the hill through the churchyard of the parish church next to the castle, where there were interesting monuments, statuary and headstones. We stopped for lunch at the Darnley Cafe and had delicious carrot & parsnip soup with our toasties.
We picked up the car, which we had parked at the mall at the bottom of the hill, and continued northwest across Scotland. We passed through Rannoch Moor with its looming mountains and rushing waterfalls to Glen Coe and drove all around Loch Leven, then out to the shores of Loch Linnhe. We decided to drive the 20 miles or so north to Ft. William before heading south to Oban for the night. In Ft. William we saw Neptune's Staircase, a series of locks that raise the level of the Caledonian Canal 64 feet in about a quarter mile. From there we could look back at the slopes of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain range in Scotland.
We began heading south, planning to check into our b&b and find dinner in Oban, but a few miles south of Ft. William traffic was stopped and a police officer explained that there had been a very serious accident and the road would be closed for at least two or three hours. He suggested that we head back to Ft. William, have dinner and try again. Steve had noticed a place along the loch, so we went there. We were sorry to be driven there by tragedy, but we had a wonderful time at The Crannog. Built on a pier out over the water, the dining room gave us a beautiful view, first of the sunset and then the developing storm that resulted in huge waves. We all split half a dozen oysters and then Steve had the smoked trout & horseradish pate, Jason had some of the sweetest mussels we'd ever tasted, in a garlicky butter sauce, and I had the cullen skink, a chowder of cream, potatoes and smoked haddock that was a real treat. Jason and Trish both had thelangoustines, which are enormous crayfish, while Steve had the halibut with asparagus and cream sauce, and I had thin fillets of sole and trout. For dessert, Steve & Trish split the creme brulee, while I talked Jason into sharing the cheese plate and a glass of muscat dessert wine. Throughout the meal we'd been hearing that the road might not open before midnight, and one of the other diners said that she'd offered her services as a nurse and been told that the occupants of the cars were all dead--it sounds like at least two cars went off the road into the water. We were just about to start looking for a place to stay in Ft. William when the hostess came to the table to say that the road had opened, so we were able to get on our way. It was slow going on one lane past the accident site--where we couldn't see anything but tow trucks--but once we'd weathered that, it was smooth sailing down to Oban through a dark and stormy night. We found Barriemore House, out on the pier looking over the harbor and were treated to two of the loveliest rooms I've ever had in a b&b. The beds were comfortable and the bathrooms were palatial and when we woke in the morning, the view across the harbor was stunning. The only problem was that a window had been left open all evening, so the room itself was quite cold--watching Jason run to the bathroom in the middle of the night in his parka was a treat.
Our breakfast in the morning was similar to the one at Dunedin, but our choices also included kippers and smoked haddock, the latter of which both Trish and Jason ordered. After breakfast we drove up to an overlook point, where we could see all of Oban Bay, and then visited their tourist information center.
The weather throughout our trip was astonishing. Despite having grown up in the Northeast, I don't think I've ever experienced such consistently variable weather. Even when we weren't moving around, it went from bright sunshine to grey overcast to rain to sleet and back again in the space of half an hour and when we were travelling, it was a different day around every bend in the road, it seemed. I was changing my glasses every ten minutes the whole trip and we saw some stunning clouds.
From Oban we drove down through Kilmartin Glen and stopped at the nifty museum there. Kilmartin has one of the largest concentrations of pre-historic sites in the world: standing stones, cairns, hillforts, crannogs, and carvings. We had a very nice lunch at the glass-enclosed cafe in the beautiful stone building of the museum, looking out on a field containing one of the cairns. After lunch we drove around the area. Most of the sites are closed, due to concern about spreading hoof-and-mouth among the livestock, but we could see some of them from the road and one was open so we could climb up the hill to see the cup-and-ring carvings on the exposed rock and admire the view.
We drove on down the west side of Loch Lomond to Glasgow. We had planned to stay there that night, but were unable to find a hotel room, due to two large conventions being in town at the same time. So we drove back to Edinburgh (about 40 miles away) and stayed at the Amaragua Guest House. We had a lovely dinner at Petit Paris in the Grassmarket--my appetizer of smoked salmon and asparagus in beurre blanc was especially good.
On Wednesday morning, Trish & Steve dropped Jason and me off at the train station. They headed south by car while we took the train back to Glasgow. We visited the cathedral there, where we walked in on a performance in the nave by the orchestra, jazz ensemble and show choir from the American School in Stuttgart. After wandering around the cathedral for a while, admiring the stained glass windows and the gorgeous choir screen and ceiling and seeing the tomb--decorated with finely crafted tapestries and a "painting" of dried flowers--and shrine to St. Mungo in the crypt--which also had some interesting windows--and the Blackadder Aisle chapel, we walked up the hill to the Necropolis, a very interesting cemetary crowned with a monument to John Knox that looks out over the city, as well as many other ornate structures and graves. Once back down the hill, we visited the St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life. Its exhibits are odd--they have the flavor of explaining religion to someone who knows nothing whatsoever about it. In addition to some lovely artifacts from various of the major world religions, they house Dali's "Christ of St. John of the Cross."
Leaving there, we walked through the Merchant City section of town and grabbed lunch at the food court in St. Enoch's mall while calling around to see if it would be possible to get a room that night in Glasgow. No luck there, so we made reservations back in Edinburgh and then went to the Gallery of Modern Art. We very much enjoyed their collection of extremely contemporary works--most by living artists--and especially enjoyed our discovery of Patrick Hughes' work.
Taking the train back to Edinburgh, we checked into the Hotel Ibis and had a nap. For dinner we walked up the Royal Mile to The Witchery. We had a wonderful meal in the dark warmth of their Secret Garden room, one of the most atmospheric dining rooms of my experience. My steak tartare with quails egg was excellent and Jason's seafood pie was quite tasty, though heavy on the potatoes.
On Thursday we once again took the train to Glasgow and headed via the obviously-built-in-the-seventies underground (the tunnels say "Ride the Train of Soul and Spirit") to the West End of the city. We visited the Hunterian Art Gallery, which includes reconstructed interiors from one of the homes which Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife lived in and altered extensively. Their collection also includes several rooms of works by Whistler, who left them the contents of his studio when he died, so many of the works are unfinished to some degree. From there we walked down past some lovely gardens to the Kelvingrove Museum. Much of the museum is dedicated to natural history, but they do have several galleries of paintings, including a lovely Burne-Jones painting of Danae and George Henry's "Japanese Woman with a Fan." At both galleries we had the opportunity to become more familiar with the Glasgow Boys and the Glasgow Colorists, two different schools of local artists.
We headed back downtown and had a late lunch at Pizza Express before catching our train at Central Station for London. The trip took about six hours, most of which we spent reading through the two movie magazines I'd picked up in the station. We made it home about 11:30pm.
